Groupe de Physique Statistique/ Arbeitsgruppe Statistische Physik

The behaviour of complex networks under failure or attack depends strongly on the specific scenario. Of special interest are scale-free networks, which are usually seen as robust under random failure but appear to be especially vulnerable to targeted attacks. In a recent study of public transport networks of 14 major cities of the world we have shown that these systems when represented by appropriate graphs may exhibit scale-free behaviour. In this paper we briefly review some of the recent results about the effects that defunct or removed nodes have on the properties of public transport networks. Simulating different directed attack strategies, we derive vulnerability criteria that result in minimal strategies with high impact on these systems.