Networked analysis of the Shanghai subway network, in China

Recently, cities have become larger and larger, and more and more people are living in large cities. This phenomenon has caused serious traffic congestion which is very detrimental to the development of large cities. In this context, the subway has become the most effective solution for relieving traffic congestion and subways have been constructed in many cities, so the reliability and robustness of subways should be guaranteed. In this paper, Shanghai subway network, in China, will be analyzed and investigated; the topological characteristics and functional properties can be studied in order to assess the reliability and robustness. The topological characteristics can be measured using several parameters; meanwhile the fraction of removed nodes of Shanghai subway network is discussed and compared against that for a random network, and the critical threshold of this fraction is obtained. Two novel parameters called the functionality loss and connectivity of subway lines are proposed for measuring the transport functionality and the connectivity of subway lines. Subway lines 4 and 7 are selected as examples for evaluating the connectivity of lines subjected to different attack protocols. This study indicates that the subway network is robust against random attacks but fragile for malicious attacks, and the highest betweenness node-based attacks can cause the most serious damage to subway networks among the different attack protocols.