In this paper, we are concerned with the resilience of locally routed network
flows with finite link capacities. In this setting, an external inflow is
injected to the so-called origin nodes. The total inflow arriving at each node
is routed locally such that none of the outgoing links are overloaded unless
the node receives an inflow greater than its total outgoing capacity. A link
irreversibly fails if it is overloaded or if there is no operational link in
its immediate downstream to carry its flow. For such systems, resilience is
defined as the minimum amount of reduction in the link capacities that would
result in the failure of all the outgoing links of an origin node. We show that
such networks do not necessarily become more resilient as additional capacity
is built in the network. Moreover, when the external inflow does not exceed the
network capacity, selective reductions of capacity at certain links can
actually help averting the cascading failures, without requiring any change in
the local routing policies. This is an attractive feature as it is often easier
in practice to reduce the available capacity of some critical links than to add
physical capacity or to alter routing policies, e.g., when such policies are
determined by social behavior, as in the case of road traffic networks. The
results can thus be used for real-time monitoring of distance-to-failure in
such networks and devising a feasible course of actions to avert systemic
failures.Comment: Accepted to the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 201
