Network breakdown “at the edge of chaos” in multi-agent traffic simulations

Much of our technological infrastructure (traffic, electricity, telephone, water) operates on networks. Many of the phenomena on infrastructure networks display spatio-temporal structure. For example, traffic congestion only occurs at certain places and times; electricity is most used on very cold or very hot days, and in specific neighborhoods; telephone networks are heavily used on special days (e.g. Christmas) or after exceptional events (e.g. catastrophes). Both the theory and the modelling/simulation of spatio-temporal systems made important progress in the last decades. However, the following two aspects differentiate infrastructure systems from “standard” spatio-temporal systems: