Network Structural Vulnerability: A Multiobjective Attacker Perspective

Criticality of the airports within the U.S. Airline Network as it was in 1997 (node size is proportional to its degree and node color is proportional to criticality). The criticality is calculated by considering an attacker that aims at destroying some nodes, dealing the largest possible damage while keeping the cost of the attack to a minimum; the criticality is the frequency of attack of a node considering the solutions in the Pareto front. Panel (a): criticality for equal attack costs (b) criticality assuming the nodes are protected in a way proportional to the criticality indices shown in Panel (a).