Network adaptability from disaster disruptions and cascading failures

Disasters can cause severe service disruptions due to large-scale correlated cascading failures in telecom networks. Major network disruptions due to disasters - both natural (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, 2011 Japan Tsunami) and human-made (e.g., 9/11 terrorist attack) - deprive the affected population of essential network services for weeks and severely hamper rescue operations. Many techniques exist to provide fast network protection, but they are optimized for limited faults without addressing the extent of disaster failures. Thus, there is a pressing need for novel robust survivability methods to mitigate the effects of disasters on telecom networks. While researchers in climatology, geology, and environmental science have been studying how to predict disasters and assess disaster risks for certain regions, networking research can exploit…