A complex network approach to power system vulnerability analysis based on rebalance based flow centrality

The study of networks is an extensively investigated field of research, with networks and network structure often encoding relationships describing certain systems or processes. Critical infrastructure is understood as being a structure whose failure or damage has considerable impact on safety, security and wellbeing of society, with power systems considered a classic example. The work presented in this paper builds on the long-lasting foundations of network and complex network theory, proposing an extension in form of rebalance based flow centrality for structural vulnerability assessment and critical component identification in adaptive network topologies. The proposed measure is applied to power system vulnerability analysis, with performance demonstrated on the IEEE 30-, 57-and 118-bus test system, out performing relevant methods from the state-of-the-art. The proposed framework is deterministic (guaranteed), analytically obtained (interpretable) and generalizes well with changing network parameters, providing a complementary tool to power system vulnerability analysis and planning