Efficacy of Fiedler value versus nodal degree in spare capacity allocation

In this paper, instead of using the average nodal degree metric, we suggest to use the Fiedler value metric, adopted from the spectral graph theory, namely the 2^nd smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of a given network topology, to quantify network connectivity in studies of spare capacity allocation problem. Ideally, such a robustness measure should be sensitive to the existence of nodes or links which are more important than others, for example, if their failures cause total network´s disintegration. Our extensive simulation-based studies show that this metric is a more informative and more accurate parameter than the average nodal degree for characterizing network topologies´ connectivity in network survivability studies.