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Covering Trains by Stations or The power of Data Reduction. Karsten Weihe, ALEX98, 1998 Presented by Yantao Song. Overview. Problem description Data Reduction Computational study and experiment results. Problem.
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Covering Trains by Stationsor The power of Data Reduction Karsten Weihe, ALEX98, 1998 Presented by Yantao Song
Overview • Problem description • Data Reduction • Computational study and experiment results
Problem • Given a set of trains, select a set of stations such that every train meets at least one of these stations and the number of selected trains is minimum.
Formal Problem Description • Given an undirected graph G=(V, E), paths p1, p2……pn in G, and a partition V=V1∪ V2∪…∪ Vm of V into m disjoint vertex classes. • A PCV (path-cover by vertices) is a subset such that every path pimeets at least one vertex in V ‘. • The problem is to find a PCV V’ of minimum size |V’|. • More specifically, among all PCVs of minimum size, V’ should maximize the vector ( | V’∩ V1|, | V’∩ V2|, …, | V’∩ Vm|) lexicographically. • This problem is NP-Hard.
Path plis an ordered sequence (v1l, …, vnll ) of vertices such that {vil, vi+1l} ∈ E for i = 1, …, nl–1. • Vertices and edges may occur more than once in the same path. • If an edge occurs more than once, it may occur several times with the same direction, or opposite direction. • It’s possible that two paths are exactly equal, or exact reverse of another path. • Without losing generality, we can assume that every edge belongs to some paths.
Paper’s background • The data in this paper comes from the central German train railroad company. • Paths are the trains in the time schedules. • V is the union of all stations met by at least one of the trains. • We have one edge {v,w} ∈ E iff v, w are directly connected vertices by at least one train path. • Purpose: find a minimum number of stations. • It may be desirable to prefer some stations over other stations. So we have to “maximize the vector ( | V’∩ V1|, | V’∩ V2|, …, | V’∩ Vm|) lexicographically” as described above.
Data Reduction • For a vertex v∈ V , P(v) denotes the set of all paths pi meeting v. • For a path pi, V(pi) denotes the ordinary set of vertices met by pi, which is unordered and don’t allow repetitions of vertices.
Vertex’s dominance and equivalence • Dominance: Let i, j∈{1,…,m}, v∈Vi w∈Vj , if i<jandP(v)=P(w) or i>=jand P(w) P(v),then we say that v dominate w. • Equivalence: if P(v)=P(w) and i=j, v and w is equivalent.
Path’s dominance and equivalence • Dominance: Let i, j∈{1,…,k}, pi pj , if V(pi) V(pj),then we say that pi dominate pj. • Equivalence: if V(pi) = V(pj),pi , pj is equivalent.
Procedure of reducing vertex • Remove v from V, and all edges incident to v from E. • If u, w∈V are incident to v, there is a path pi which contains u-v-w or w-v-u as a subpath, then an edge {u, w} should be added into E. • All occurrences of v in paths are removed.
Procedures of reducing a path • Remove pi from path set. • Every edge e∈E which doesn’t belong to any path afterward is removed. • Every vertex v∈V whose P(v) is empty afterwards is removed.
If the vertex/path is dominated by or equivalent to some other vertices/paths. Then it’s feasible to be reduced. • At the early stage of reduction, use non-exhaustive vertex reduction; at the end of reduction, use exhaustive reduction. • After reducing, we can get an irreducible core. • An optimal solution to an irreducible core is also an optimal solution to the original instance. • Then we use the brute-force approach to solve the problem.
Computational Study • Experiments based on real world data of Europe train network.
Train classes • Class 0: high-speed trains; • Class 1: other international or long-distance trains; • Class 2: regional trains; • Class 3: local trains; • Class 4: other trains;
For some instances which consist of trivial connected components, even we can get solution for problem only by data reduction. • For the other cases, the number of non-trivial connected components and size of these components are essential to complexity of the problem.
Conclusion and Discussion • In this case, the size of problem can be reduced to 10% of original size.The reduction algorithm is very efficient for this case. • This is an extreme case, can’t be extended to all cases with so high efficiency. But it give us an case that even the problem is NP-Hard, but we still can solve it in affordable time for some real world cases.