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The Firefighter Problem: Application of Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

  • Conference paper
Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation (EvoCOP 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8600))

Abstract

The firefigther problem is a deterministic discrete-time model for the spread (and the containment) of fire on an undirected graph. Assuming that the fire breaks out at a predefined set of vertices, the goal is to save as many vertices as possible from burning. The same model has also been used in the literature for the simulation of the spreading of deseases. In this work we present, to our knowledge, the first metaheuristics for tackling this problem. In particular, a pure ant colony optimization approach and a hybrid variant of this algorithm are proposed. The results show that the hybrid ant colony optimization variant is superior to the pure ant colony optimization version and to a mathematical programming solver, especially when the graph size and density grows.

This work was supported by grant TIN2012-37930 of the Spanish Government, and project 2009-SGR1137 of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Science and Artifical Intelligence, Univ. of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, San Sebastian, Spain

    Christian Blum

  2. IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain

    Christian Blum

  3. ALBCOM Research Group, Univ. Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Maria J. Blesa

  4. Dept. of Computing and Numerical Analysis, Univ. of Córdoba, Spain

    Carlos García-Martínez

  5. Dept. of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Univ. of Granada, Spain

    Francisco J. Rodríguez & Manuel Lozano

Authors
  1. Christian Blum
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  2. Maria J. Blesa
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  3. Carlos García-Martínez
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  4. Francisco J. Rodríguez
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  5. Manuel Lozano
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, University of the Basque Country, Paseo Manuel Lardizabal 1, 20018, San Sebastian, Spain

    Christian Blum

  2. School of Natural Sciences, Department of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Room 4B104, Cottrell Building, FK9 4LA, Stirling, UK

    Gabriela Ochoa

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Blum, C., Blesa, M.J., García-Martínez, C., Rodríguez, F.J., Lozano, M. (2014). The Firefighter Problem: Application of Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms. In: Blum, C., Ochoa, G. (eds) Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation. EvoCOP 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8600. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44320-0_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44320-0_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44319-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44320-0

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