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An integer programming approach for solving the p-dispersion problem

Fatemeh Sayyady and Yahya Fathi

European Journal of Operational Research, 2016, vol. 253, issue 1, 216-225

Abstract: Given a collection of n items (elements) and an associated symmetric distance dij between each pair of items i and j, we seek a subset P of these items (with a given cardinality p) so that the minimum pairwise distance among the selected items is maximized. This problem is known as the max–min diversity problem or the p-dispersion problem, and it is shown to be np-hard. We define a collection of node packing problems associated with each instance of this problem and employ a binary search among these node packing problems to devise an effective procedure for solving the original problem. We employ existing integer programming techniques, i.e., branch-and-bound and strong valid inequalities, to solve these node packing problems. Through a computational experiment we show that this approach can be used to solve relatively large instances of the p-dispersion problem, i.e., instances with more than 1000 items. We also discuss an application of this problem in the context of locating traffic sensors in a highway network.

Keywords: Location problem; Max–min diversity; Integer programming; Traffic sensor location (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:253:y:2016:i:1:p:216-225

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.02.026

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European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

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