Graph orientation and flows over time

DOI10.1002/NET.21623zbMATH Open1390.90089arXiv1409.3081OpenAlexW2174840090MaRDI QIDQ4642437FDOQ4642437

Martin Skutella, Ashwin Arulselvan, Martin Groß

Publication date: 23 May 2018

Published in: Networks (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Flows over time are used to model many real-world logistic and routing problems. The networks underlying such problems -- streets, tracks, etc. -- are inherently undirected and directions are only imposed on them to reduce the danger of colliding vehicles and similar problems. Thus the question arises, what influence the orientation of the network has on the network flow over time problem that is being solved on the oriented network. In the literature, this is also referred to as the contraflow or lane reversal problem. We introduce and analyze the price of orientation: How much flow is lost in any orientation of the network if the time horizon remains fixed? We prove that there is always an orientation where we can still send $frac13$ of the flow and this bound is tight. For the special case of networks with a single source or sink, this fraction is $frac12$ which is again tight. We present more results of similar flavor and also show non-approximability results for finding the best orientation for single and multicommodity maximum flows over time.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3081

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zbMATH Keywords

graph orientationflow over timedynamic flowlane reversal

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Deterministic network models in operations research (90B10)

Cited In (1)

• Exploiting Bounded Signal Flow for Graph Orientation Based on Cause–Effect Pairs

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