ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Natural hazards may have severe impacts on the performance of network systems. Although a natural hazard is usually spatially local, its impact, through the network topology, could become global. This paper is particularly concerned with the global impact of spatially local hazards on network systems. To this end, the paper firstly proposes a new spatial vulnerability model of network systems, which emphases on global impact of spatially local hazards. This model attempts to consider four factors, hazard location, area covered by hazard, global impact of hazard (including direct impact and indirect impact), node preparedness level against hazards, and proposes two spatial vulnerability indexes: Absolute Spatial Vulnerability Index (ASVI) and Relative Spatial Vulnerability Index (RSVI), to reflect the vulnerability of a network system when the system faces spatially local hazards. Then we conduct a case study on the spatial vulnerability of the Chinese civil aviation network system to verify the model. The results show that all simulation results of the model is in line with common senses about the Chinese civil aviation system.
