Abstract: In order to have a general overview of research progress on vulnerability of district heating system and its related infrastructure network, and predict research prospect, a systematic and thorough literature review was carried out. Then, infrastructures that were interdependent with district heating system were sorted out, and interdependent networks were summarized. Finally, research status of attack mode, cascading failure model and vulnerability evaluation was discussed respectively according to basic process of vulnerability assessment. The results show that vulnerability studies on district heating system are still in an early stage of development. In order to establish a perfect assessment system, following problems need to be solved, including establishing an interdependent network in line with objective law on the basis of four kinds of dependencies, building a cascading failure model to match with different response time so as to reflect failure propagation features, and developing a reasonable and comprehensive vulnerability assessment system of interdependent network where critical links can be found.

Key words: district heating, related infrastructure, network vulnerability, cascading failure, interdependency