Sustainability 2015, 7, 6919-6936; doi:10.3390/su7066919 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article Vulnerability Analysis of Urban Rail Transit Networks: A Case Study of Shanghai, China Daniel (Jian) Sun 1,2, Yuhan Zhao 2,3,* and Qing-Chang Lu 1 1 State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean & Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China; E-Mails:
[email protected] (D.J.S.);
[email protected] (Q.-C.L.) 2 Transportation Research Center, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China 3 Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-21-3420-6674; Fax: +86-21-3420-6197. Academic Editor: Marc A. Rosen Received: 29 March 2015 / Accepted: 30 April 2015 / Published: 28 May 2015 Abstract: Rail transit is developing rapidly in major cities of China and has become a key component of urban transport. Nevertheless, the security and reliability in operation are significant issues that cannot be neglected. In this paper, the network and station vulnerabilities of the urban rail transit system were analyzed based on complex network and graph theories. A vulnerability evaluation model was proposed by accounting metro interchange and passenger flow and further validated by a case study of Shanghai Metro with full-scale network and real-world traffic data. It is identified that the urban rail transit network is rather robust to random attacks, but is vulnerable to the largest degree node-based attacks and the highest betweenness node-based attacks.