The 21st-century Maritime Silk Road container shipping network (MSRCSN) is pivotal for global economic and social progress, yet it exhibits vulnerabilities impacting the stability of maritime transportation and international trade. This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of the MSRCSN's network topology, demonstrating its insignificant small-world and scale-free properties. We introduce an enhanced cascading failure model grounded in a nonlinear capacity framework, enabling the examination of maritime shipping networks' vulnerability to cascading failures, predicated solely on routes connectivity and empirical port load data. Applying this model to the MSRCSN, our findings corroborate a pronounced increase in dynamic vulnerability due to cascading failures, compared to static vulnerability. The network's static structure is exceedingly susceptible to disruptions at ports with high connectivity, whereas in the context of cascading failures, the greatest vulnerability lies in ports with substantial load. Efforts to augment port capacity yield marginal benefits in mitigating dynamic vulnerability. We propose the novel concept of network capacity investment cost, revealing that prioritizing capacity redundancy for lower-load ports can optimize overall investment efficiency in network capacity. These insights offer strategic guidance for enhancing the resilience of the MSRCSN against vulnerabilities.

中文翻译：

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21世纪海上丝绸之路集装箱运输网络级联故障脆弱性研究

21世纪海上丝绸之路集装箱运输网络（MSRCSN）对全球经济社会进步至关重要，但也存在影响海上运输和国际贸易稳定的脆弱性。本研究对MSRCSN的网络拓扑进行了全面分析，证明了其微不足道的小世界和无标度特性。我们引入了基于非线性容量框架的增强型级联故障模型，能够仅根据航线连通性和经验港口负载数据来检查海运网络对级联故障的脆弱性。将此模型应用于 MSRCSN，我们的发现证实了与静态漏洞相比，由于级联故障而导致的动态漏洞显着增加。网络的静态结构非常容易受到高连接性端口中断的影响，而在级联故障的情况下，最大的脆弱性在于具有大量负载的端口。增加港口容量的努力在减轻动态脆弱性方面产生了边际效益。我们提出了网络容量投资成本的新概念，揭示了优先考虑低负载端口的容量冗余可以优化网络容量的整体投资效率。这些见解为增强 MSRCSN 抵御漏洞的能力提供了战略指导。