The Complexity of Finding Optimal Subgraphs to Represent Spatial Correlation

Enright, Jessica, Lee, Duncan, Meeks, Kitty, Pettersson, William and Sylvester, John ORCID: 0000-0002-6543-2934 (2021) The Complexity of Finding Optimal Subgraphs to Represent Spatial Correlation. In: Combinatorial Optimization and Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13135 . Springer International Publishing, pp. 152-166. ISBN 978-3-030-92680-9

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92681-6_13

Abstract

Understanding spatial correlation is vital in many fields including epidemiology and social science. Lee, Meeks and Pettersson (Stat. Comput. 2021) recently demonstrated that improved inference for areal unit count data can be achieved by carrying out modifications to a graph representing spatial correlations; specifically, they delete edges of the planar graph derived from border-sharing between geographic regions in order to maximise a specific objective function. In this paper we address the computational complexity of the associated graph optimisation problem. We demonstrate that this problem cannot be solved in polynomial time unless P = NP; we further show intractability for two simpler variants of the problem. We follow these results with two parameterised algorithms that exactly solve the problem in polynomial time in restricted settings. The first of these utilises dynamic programming on a tree decomposition, and runs in polynomial time if both the treewidth and maximum degree are bounded. The second algorithm is restricted to problem instances with maximum degree three, as may arise from triangulations of planar surfaces, but is an FPT algorithm when the maximum number of edges that can be removed is taken as the parameter.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Parameterised complexity, Treewidth, Colour coding, Spatial statistics
Divisions:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2023 09:54
Last Modified:	15 Mar 2024 19:49
DOI:	10.1007/978-3-030-92681-6_13
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3169004