The Firefighter Problem: Application of Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

Abstract

AbstractThe 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.KeywordsRandom GraphHeuristic InformationDeterminism RateGraph SizeDiscrete Apply MathematicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.