Error and Attack Tolerance of Layered Complex Networks

Many complex systems may be described by not one but a number of complex networks mapped on each other in a multi-layer structure. Because of the interactions and dependencies between these layers, the state of a single layer does not necessarily reflect well the state of the entire system. In this paper, the authors study the robustness of five examples of two-layer complex systems: three real-life data sets in the fields of communication the Internet, transportation the European railway system, and biology the human brain, and two models based on random graphs. In order to cover the whole range of features specific to these systems, they focus on two extreme policies of system's response to failures, no rerouting and full rerouting.