PONE-D-23-33015Propagation and Control of Congestion Risk in Scale-Free Networks Based on Information EntropyPLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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Comments to the Author

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The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. According to the authors' proposal, the congestion risk in the traffic network takes into account the probabilities of five threats (the risk occurrence probability; the risk of loss; the unpredictability of risk; the uncontrollability of risk; the transferability of risk). The model of study the propagation pattern of congestion risk in network is built on this key assumption. However, this thesis is not noted in the Conclusions and/or in the Abstract.

2. What is the meaning of the word "tr" in the sentence "Therefore, = 4.72 is the threshold, called the key risk resistance threshold tr of the traffic network." (section 4.2, penultimate paragraph)?

3. In section 3.1 the sequence of presentation is broken. It is logic to move equation (7) to the end of section 3.1.

4. Abbreviation STCS for the space-time congestion subgraph (Introduction, 2nd paragraph) is not repeated in the text.

5. Formalization of equations:

- Eq. (6) contains an unconventional three dots.

- When transferring equations that do not fit on one line, on any sign ("=" in eq. (3), "+" in eq. (5)), this sign is written at the end of the first line and the beginning of the second.

- After the equation it is customary to put a point; in cases where the next paragraph begins with "where", a comma is written.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Pavlo V. Anakhov

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Propagation and Control of Congestion Risk in Scale-Free Networks Based on Information Entropy

PONE-D-23-33015R1

Dear Dr. Li,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Tinggui Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: General comment

I think the paper is well written, clear and fully innovative. I really appreciate it.

In particular, the authors introduce a new perspective in risk propagation, suggesting not only to consider the transmission of healthy or infection state of a node, during a shock propagation, but also the “tolerance threshold” of each node, i.e. the maximum risk resistance capacity. A conditional probability, more than a “simple” risk probability is then defined. This means that the authors take into account the fact that a dynamical system evolves and that its boundary conditions do the same. At each time step, a new system needs to be considered.

Major comments

I suggest the authors to add this “concept”, i. e. the introduction of a variable tolerance threshold for each node (intersection) to the abstract also, pushing the innovative feature of the paper.

I ask to the authors which is the time scale of variable t and t+1? I mean, on which time scale these equations are valid? If I study each minute (high frequency events) or each half-hours (low frequency events) the traffic, I suppose the relations among intersections and nodes similarities can change.

A sentence on that can be interesting to asses model robustness with respect to the temporal scale chosen for the study.

I ask the authors to read and report in the paper few “international” and famous papers of interest about both shock and disease propagation.

I suggest to start reading from:

Bardoscia, M., Caccioli, F., Perotti, J. I., Vivaldo, G., Caldarelli, G. (2016) Distress propagation in complex networks: the case of non-linear DebtRank, PLoS ONE 11(10): e0163825. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0163825. E-ISSN: 1932-6203.”

There the authors can find some “famous” paper about complex networks, epidemic and financial shock propagation, such as

• Pastor-Satorras R, Castellano C, Van Mieghem P, Vespignani A. Epidemic processes in complex networks. Reviews of Modern Physics. 2015;87(3):925–979.

• Van den Broeck W, Gioannini C, Gonçalves B, Quaggiotto M, Colizza V, Vespignani A. The GLEaMviz computational tool, a publicly available software to explore realistic epidemic spreading scenarios at the global scale. BMC Infectious Diseases. 2011;11:37. pmid:21288355

• Battiston S, Puliga M, Tasca P, Caldarelli G, Kaushik R, Tasca P, et al. DebtRank: too central to fail? Financial networks, the FED and systemic risk. Scientific Reports. 2012;2:541. pmid:22870377

• Musmeci N, Battiston S, Caldarelli G, Puliga M, Gabrielli A. Bootstrapping topological properties and systemic risk of complex networks using the fitness model. Journal of Statistical Physics. 2013;151(3–4):720–734.

• Barabási AL. The network takeover. Nature Physics. 2011;8(1):14–16.

I suggest to the authors for a future development of the work to consider the use of temporal networks on this model.

Minor revision: Define BA at the end of “Construction of the traffic network generation model” paragraph. I think is Barabasi-Albert, but please specify.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Pavlo V. Anakhov

Reviewer #2: No

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