SGER: The Impact of Breakdowns of Physical Infrastructure on Social Networks

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The nature of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City demonstrates the need for understanding the interdependencies between physical infrastructure and social networks. The benefits of such understanding may include possible recommendations on modifying the design of the physical infrastructures to improve their resilience to catastrophic disruptions. Models of social networks relying on wireless and wired communication infrastructures would allow the development and testing of efficient algorithms to determine critical blocks in the infrastructures, whose distraction will adversely affect the communication traffic inside of and among social networks. This research project will use the graph-theoretic approach to model social networks and their reliance on physical infrastructures, focusing mainly on social networks in the New York City area and the providing infrastructures, including telephone networks, towers for the wireless communication, transportation and emergency services. This knowledge will be used to identify opportunities for reducing vulnerabilities, developing countermeasures to mitigate the impact of disruptions, and guiding actions for timely response and discovery.