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Heuristic Search with Cut Point Based Strategy for Critical Node Problem

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  • Theory and Algorithms
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Abstract

The critical node problem (CNP) aims to deal with critical node identification in a graph, which has extensive applications in many fields. Solving CNP is a challenging task due to its computational complexity, and it attracts much attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, we propose a population-based heuristic search algorithm called CPHS (Cut Point Based Heuristic Search) to solve CNP, which integrates two main ideas. The first one is a cut point based greedy strategy in the local search, and the second one involves the functions used to update the solution pool of the algorithm. Besides, a mutation strategy is applied to solutions with probability based on the overall average similarity to maintain the diversity of the solution pool. Experiments are performed on a synthetic benchmark, a real-world benchmark, and a large-scale network benchmark to evaluate our algorithm. Compared with state-of-the-art algorithms, our algorithm has better performance in terms of both solution quality and run time on all the three benchmarks.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

    Zhi-Han Chen  (陈志翰) & Shao-Wei Cai  (蔡少伟)

  2. Key Laboratory of System Software (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Zhi-Han Chen  (陈志翰) & Shao-Wei Cai  (蔡少伟)

  3. College of Information Science and Technology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Jian Gao  (高 健)

  4. School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Shi-Ke Ge  (葛士可) & Chan-Juan Liu  (刘婵娟)

  5. SeedMath Technology Limited, Beijing, 100086, China

    Jin-Kun Lin  (林锦坤)

Authors
  1. Zhi-Han Chen  (陈志翰)
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  2. Shao-Wei Cai  (蔡少伟)
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  3. Jian Gao  (高 健)
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  5. Chan-Juan Liu  (刘婵娟)
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  6. Jin-Kun Lin  (林锦坤)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shao-Wei Cai  (蔡少伟).

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Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant Nos. XDA0320000 and XDA0320300, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61972063.

Zhi-Han Chen received his B.S. degree in computer science and technology from Peking University, Beijing, in 2020. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree with the School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. His current research interests include constraint solving and electronic design automation.

Shao-Wei Cai received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Peking University, Beijing, in 2012. He is currently a professor in Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. He has developed efficient SAT/SMT/MaxSAT solvers, which have received many awards in SAT/SMT/MaxSAT competitions (or evaluations). He has won the best paper award of SAT 2021 conference. His current research interests include constraint solving and electronic design automation.

Jian Gao received his Ph.D. degree in computer application technology from Dalian Maritime University, Dalian. He is currently a professor of computer science in Northeast Normal University, Changchun. His research interests include automated reasoning, constraint programming and heuristics.

Shi-Ke Ge received his B.E. degree in computer science and technology from Shenyang University of Technology, Shenyang, in 2021. He is currently a master degree candidate in computer science and technology from Dalian University of Technology, Dalian. His research interest includes constraint solving.

Chan-Juan Liu received her Ph.D. degree in computer software and theory from Peking University, Beijing, in 2016. She is currently an associate professor with School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian. Her current research interests include game theory and multi-agent decision making.

Jin-Kun Lin received his Ph.D. degree in computer science and theory from Peking University, Beijing, in 2018. He is currently the chief technology officer with SeedMath Technology Limited, Beijing. His current research interests include software testing and heuristic search.

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Chen, ZH., Cai, SW., Gao, J. et al. Heuristic Search with Cut Point Based Strategy for Critical Node Problem. J. Comput. Sci. Technol. 39, 1328–1340 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-024-2850-0

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