Based on the concept of topology similarity

the theory that reliability of distribution network has a close relationship with topology is presented to avoid the topology being excluded in the reliability evaluation and rationalize the distribution network planning. First

the practical network is abstracted into a topology

and then this topology is presented by adjacency matrix with weight and failure degree matrix. Second

a similarity function is proposed based on vertex/edge sharing(VES). This paper also evaluates the reliability by clustering and extracts key factors to increase the reliability. Besides

branch permutation

network structure and the locations of distributed generators(DGs)are introduced as three indices to guide the distribution network planning. Detailed strategies are provided in the analysis of engineering project to verify the operability of the proposed method.