Research on Combining Pattern Mining and Evolutionary Algorithm for Critical Node Detection Problems

Abstract

The critical node detection problems (CNDPs) have important applications in network security, smart grid, epidemic control, drug design, and risk assessment. The critical node problem (CNP) is one of well-known CNDPs, which is NP-hard. In this work, we combine frequent pattern mining with evolutionary algorithm for solving CNP, where pattern mined from high-quality solutions are used to guide the construction of offspring solution. More specifically, based on the memetic algorithm (Memetic Algorithm for CNP, MACNP), frequent pattern mining was integrated into the memetic algorithm framework. The frequent patterns mined were used to construct the offspring solution, instead of crossover operator in MACNP. In the research, the nodes in frequent items set were directly fixed as part of the offspring solution. So the offspring solution inherited excellent properties from more parent solutions, thus forming the algorithm called Frequent Pattern Based Search for CNP (FPBS-CNP). This strategy improved the algorithm efficiency. Experiments were conducted on synthetic and real-world benchmark. We experimentally compare FPBS-CNP with MACNP. The experiment results show that FPBS-CNP performs well on small instances and has potential in solving large instances.