As the modern power system is expected to develop to a more intelligent and efficientversion, i.e. the smart grid, or to be the central backbone of energy internet for freeenergyinteractions,securityconcernsrelatedtocascadingfailureshavebeenraisedwithconsideration of catastrophic results. The researches of topological analysis based oncomplex networks have made great contributions in revealing structural vulnerabilitiesof power grids including cascading failure analysis. However, existing literature withinappropriate assumptions in modeling still cannot distinguish the effects between thestructure and operational state to give meaningful guidance for system operation. Thispaper is to reveal the interrelation between network structure and operational statesin cascading failure and give quantitative evaluation by integrating both perspectives.For structure analysis, cascading paths will be identified by extended betweenness andquantitatively described by cascading drop and cascading gradient. Furthermore, theoperational state for cascading paths will be described by loading level. Then, the riskof cascading failure along a specific cascading path can be quantitatively evaluatedconsideringthesetwofactors.Themaximumcascadinggradientofallpossiblecascadingpaths can be used as an overall metric to evaluate the entire power grid for its featuresrelated to cascading failure. The proposed method is tested and verified on IEEE30-bussystem and IEEE118-bus system, simulation evidences presented in this paper suggest
