Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1109.4729

Parameterized Complexity of Firefighting Revisited

Marek Cygan·Fedor V. Fomin·Erik Jan van Leeuwen
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The Firefighter problem is to place firefighters on the vertices of a graph to prevent a fire with known starting point from lighting up the entire graph. In each time step, a firefighter may be permanently placed on an unburned vertex and the fire spreads to its neighborhood in the graph in so far no firefighters are protecting those vertices. The goal is to let as few vertices burn as possible. This problem is known to be NP-complete, even when restricted to bipartite graphs or to trees of maximum degree three. Initial study showed the Firefighter problem to be fixed-parameter tractable on trees in various parameterizations. We complete these results by showing that the problem is in FPT on general graphs when parameterized by the number of burned vertices, but has no polynomial kernel on trees, resolving an open problem. Conversely, we show that the problem is W[1]-hard when parameterized by the number of unburned vertices, even on bipartite graphs. For both parameterizations, we additionally give refined algorithms on trees, improving on the running times of the known algorithms.

Explore related subjects

cs.DMcs.DS

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Marek Cygan, Fedor V. Fomin, Erik Jan van Leeuwen. 2011-09-22. Parameterized Complexity of Firefighting Revisited. https://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4729

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

An FPTAS for Two-Machine Open-Shop Scheduling with a Single Unavailability Interval

We consider the two-machine open-shop scheduling problem in which one machine is unavailable during a fixed interval. We study the resumable setting: an operation interrupted by the unavailability interval may resume, without penalty, when the machine becomes available. The objective is to minimize the makespan. Although the problem is NP-hard and several approximation algorithms are known, whether it admits a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) has remained open for two decades. We resolve this question affirmatively by giving the first FPTAS, thereby strengthening the previously known polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS). As an intermediate result, we develop a new pseudo-polynomial dynamic program with seven state dimensions, improving on the ten-dimensional formulation in the literature.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2026

Generalized Graph Search Trees

Graph search algorithms and their corresponding graph search trees are commonly used in algorithmic graph theory. In recent years, the recognition problem of these graph search trees has received significant attention. So far, the research has focused on two types of search trees: first-in trees that behave like BFS-trees and last-in trees that behave like DFS-trees. The search tree paradigms differ from each other by the parent a vertex is connected to. In first-in trees, it is the first visited neighbor, while in last-in trees it is the last neighbor visited before that vertex. Here, we will generalize these concepts of graph search trees by allowing every preceding neighbor of a vertex to be the parent. We study the complexity of the recognition problem of these generalized graph search trees. We present NP-completeness proofs for most searches. We also show that the problem is trivial for Generic Search and polynomial-time solvable for several searches on bipartite graphs and chordal graphs. We also study the question how fixing the start vertex influences the complexity of the problem.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2026

The exact asymptotic constant in the metric dimension of Jaccard space

Let $X$ be a finite set with $|X|=n$ and let $\mathrm{Jac}(a,b)=|a\,\triangle\, b|/|a\cup b|$ be the Jaccard distance on the power set $2^X$. Lladser and Paradise recently proved that the metric dimension of $(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})$ is $\Theta(n/\ln n)$, with the constant left open; their bounds are $(\ln 2)\,n/\ln n\lesssim \beta(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})\lesssim 2\ln(2e)\,n/\ln n$. We determine the constant: \[ \beta(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})=\frac{2n}{\log_2 n}\,(1+o(1))=(2\ln 2)\,\frac{n}{\ln n}\,(1+o(1)). \] The proof identifies the problem, on each ``slice'' of subsets of fixed cardinality, with the Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi coin-weighing problem for a spring scale (the problem of \emph{detecting matrices}). The lower bound is the Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi entropy argument applied to the middle slice; the upper bound follows from the explicit detecting families of Lindstr\"om and of Cantor and Mills, augmented by a single extra landmark that reveals cardinality.

cs.DM↗