Size constrained k simple polygons

Abstract

Given a geometric space and a set of weighted spatial points, the Size Constrained k Simple Polygons (SCkSP) problem identifies k simple polygons that maximize the total weights of the spatial points covered by the polygons and meet the polygon size constraint. The SCkSP problem is important for many societal applications including hotspot area detection and resource allocation. The problem is NP-hard; it is computationally challenging because of the large number of spatial points and the polygon size constraint. Our preliminary work introduced the Nearest Neighbor Triangulation and Merging (NNTM) algorithm for SCkSP to meet the size constraint while maximizing the total weights of the spatial points. However, we find that the performance of the NNTM algorithm is dependent on the t-nearest graph. In this paper, we extend our previous work and propose a novel approach that outperforms our prior work. Experiments using Chicago crime and U.S. Federal wildfire datasets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the computational cost of our prior work and produces a better solution.