Improved Algorithms for Dynamic Shortest Paths

Finding shortest distances and paths have always been a crucial area of study. In this article, we have proposed a linear time pre-processing method for optimization of shortest path and distance algorithms, for an undirected weighted graph with non-negative edges. In this approach, certain parts of a graph are grouped together as subgraphs termed as optimized deterministic routing areas (ODRAs). Each ODRA has a unique representative element called optimized proxy. The input graph is reduced by replacing ODRAs with optimized proxies and the new reduced graph is used for the shortest path and distance queries. This is a linear time pre-processing stage which helps in significant decrease in computation time for finding shortest distances and paths in graphs. The lower bound and upper bound of time complexity of the proposed algorithm is O(n/2) and O(n) respectively.

The multiple pairs shortest path problem (MPSP) arises in many applications where the shortest paths and distances between only some specific pairs of origin-destination (OD) nodes in a network are desired. The traditional repeated single-source shortest path (SSSP) and all pairs shortest paths (APSP) algorithms often do unnecessary computation to solve the MPSP problem. We propose a new shortest path algorithm to save computational work when solving the MPSP problem. Our method is especially suitable for applications with fixed network topology but changeable arc lengths and desired OD pairs. Preliminary computational experiments demonstrate our algorithm’s superiority on airline network problems over other APSP and SSSP algorithms.

We propose a simple and effective heuristic that allows fast generation of a large set of shortest path alternatives in weighted directed graphs. The heuristic is based on existing deviation path algorithms for exact k shortest paths. It precalculates a backward shortest path tree and thus avoids doing many shortest path computations, but as a result it does not necessarily find the exact set of k shortest paths. Computational results on real-world road networks are reported. Our tests show that the quality of the paths produced by the heuristic is most satisfactory: typically, the kth path found by the heuristic is less than 1% longer than the exact kth shortest path, for values of k up to 10,000. Moreover, the heuristic runs very fast. We also show how the heuristic can be enhanced to an exact k shortest paths algorithm, which performs well in comparison with the existing exact k shortest path algorithms.

Large numbers of travel traces are collected by vehicles and stored for applications such as optimizing delivery routes, predicting and avoiding traffic, and providing directions. Many of the applications preprocess the travel traces, usually composed of position data, by matching these with links in the underlying road network. This paper addresses the problem of persistent storage of large numbers of vehicle travel traces. We propose two methods for using a routing algorithm and road network to encode a travel trace formed by a sequence of links. An encoded trace, composed of a few links, is useful to store or share and can be decoded into the original travel trace. Considering that drivers tend to proceed from an origin to a destination by using the shortest path or going as straight as possible, the two proposed methods use the following two routing algorithms: a shortest path algorithm; and a following path algorithm, which finds the path that avoids turns. The experimental results for 30 real traces show that a travel trace is encoded into only 5% or 7% of its links on average using the shortest path algorithm or the following path algorithm, respectively.

A comparison of algorithms for origin–destination matrix generation on real road networks and an approximation approach

Computing the shortest path between two given locations in a road network is an important problem that finds applications in various map services and commercial navigation products. The state-of-the-art solutions for the problem can be divided into two categories: spatial-coherence-based methods and vertex-importance-based approaches. The two categories of techniques, however, have not been compared systematically under the same experimental framework, as they were developed from two independent lines of research that do not refer to each other. This renders it difficult for a practitioner to decide which technique should be adopted for a specific application. Furthermore, the experimental evaluation of the existing techniques, as presented in previous work, falls short in several aspects. Some methods were tested only on small road networks with up to one hundred thousand vertices; some approaches were evaluated using distance queries (instead of shortest path queries), namely, queries that ask only for the length of the shortest path; a state-of-the-art technique was examined based on a faulty implementation that led to incorrect query results. To address the above issues, this paper presents a comprehensive comparison of the most advanced spatial-coherence-based and vertex-importance-based approaches. Using a variety of real road networks with up to twenty million vertices, we evaluated each technique in terms of its preprocessing time, space consumption, and query efficiency (for both shortest path and distance queries). Our experimental results reveal the characteristics of different techniques, based on which we provide guidelines on selecting appropriate methods for various scenarios.

Given two vertices of interest (POIs) s and t on a spatial network, a distance (path) query returns the shortest network distance (shortest path) from s to t. This query has a variety of applications in practice and is a fundamental operation for many database and data mining algorithms. In this paper, we propose an efficient distance and path oracle on dynamic road networks using the randomization technique. Our oracle has a good performance in practice and remarkably, and at the same time, it has a favorable theoretical bound. Specifically, it has O(n log2 n) (resp. O(n log2n)) preprocessing time (resp. space) and O(log4n log log n) (resp. O(log4n log log n+l)) distance query time (resp. shortest path query time) as well as O(log3n) update time with high probability (w.h.p.), where n is the number of vertices in the spatial network and l is the number of edges on the shortest path. Our experiments show that the existing oracles suffer from a huge updating time that renders them impractical and our oracle enjoys a negligible updating time and meanwhile has comparable query time and indexing cost with the best existing oracle. © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery.

In the sensitive distance oracle problem, there are three phases. We first preprocess a given directed graph $G$ with $n$ nodes and integer weights from $[-W,W]$. Second, given a single batch of $f$ edge insertions and deletions, we update the data structure. Third, given a query pair of nodes $(u,v)$, return the distance from $u$ to $v$. In the easier problem called sensitive reachability oracle problem, we only ask if there exists a directed path from $u$ to $v$. Our first result is a sensitive distance oracle with $\tilde{O}(Wn^{\omega+(3-\omega)\mu})$ preprocessing time, $\tilde{O}(Wn^{2-\mu}f^{2}+Wnf^{\omega})$ update time, and $\tilde{O}(Wn^{2-\mu}f+Wnf^{2})$ query time where the parameter $\mu\in[0,1]$ can be chosen. The data-structure requires $O(Wn^{2+\mu} \log n)$ bits of memory. This is the first algorithm that can handle $f\ge\log n$ updates. Previous results (e.g. [Demetrescu et al. SICOMP'08; Bernstein and Karger SODA'08 and FOCS'09; Duan and Pettie SODA'09; Grandoni and Williams FOCS'12]) can handle at most 2 updates. When $3\le f\le\log n$, the only non-trivial algorithm was by [Weimann and Yuster FOCS'10]. When $W=\tilde{O}(1)$, our algorithm simultaneously improves their preprocessing time, update time, and query time. In particular, when $f=\omega(1)$, their update and query time is $\Omega(n^{2-o(1)})$, while our update and query time are truly subquadratic in $n$, i.e., ours is faster by a polynomial factor of $n$. To highlight the technique, ours is the first graph algorithm that exploits the kernel basis decomposition of polynomial matrices by [Jeannerod and Villard J.Comp'05; Zhou, Labahn and Storjohann J.Comp'15] developed in the symbolic computation community. [...]

Alternative pathfinding requires finding a set of k alternative paths (including the shortest path) between a given source s and a target t. Intuitively, these paths should be significantly different from each other and meaningful/natural (e.g., must not contain loops or unnecessary detours). While finding alternative paths in road networks has been extensively studied, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to formally study alternative pathfinding in game maps which are typically represented as Euclidean planes containing polygonal obstacles. First, we adapt the existing techniques designed for road networks to find alternative paths in the game maps. Then, based on our web-based system that visualises alternative paths generated by different approaches, we conduct a user study that shows that the existing road network approaches generate high-quality alternative paths when adapted for the game maps. However, these existing approaches are computationally inefficient especially when compared to the state-of-the-art shortest path algorithms. Motivated by this, we propose novel data structures and exploit these to develop an efficient algorithm to compute high-quality alternative paths. that shows that the existing road network approaches generate high-quality alternative paths in game maps. Our extensive experimental study demonstrates that our proposed algorithm is more than an order of magnitude faster than the existing approaches and returns alternative paths of comparable quality. Furthermore, our algorithm is comparable to a state-of-the-art shortest path algorithm in terms of running time.

This paper presents six new variants of the polynomially bounded Partitioning Shortest Path (PSP) algorithm for finding the shortest path from one node to all other nodes in a network. Three of these variants, one for negative arc lengths, but without negative cycles, and two for nonnegative arc lengths, augment the PSP algorithm to maintain a property called sharp by Shier and Witzgall. The other three variants augment the PSP algorithm to maintain a property called near-sharp for nonnegative arc lengths. Extensive computational testing is presented on one of the sharp variants for nonnegative arc lengths and two of the near-sharp variants. The empirical results based on 4500 test problems with 90 different configurations and three different network topologies indicate that these new algorithms have excellent computational performance characteristics. Based on total solution times for the 4500 test problems, these new algorithms out-perform all other algorithms tested. In addition, one of the near-sharp algorithms strictly dominates all others on all problem topologies tested.

Efficient parallel algorithms are presented, on the CREW PRAM model, for generating a succinct encoding of all pairs shortest path information in a directed planar graphG with real-valued edge costs but no negative cycles. We assume that a planar embedding ofG is given, together with a set ofq faces that cover all the vertices. Then our algorithm runs inO(log2 n) time and employsO(nq+M(q)) processors (whereM(t) is the number of processors required to multiply twot×t matrices inO(logt) time). Let us note here that wheneverq<n then our processor bound is better than the best previous one (M(n)).O(log2 n) time,n-processor algorithms are presented for various subproblems, including that of generating all pairs shortest path information in a directedouterplanar graph. Our work is based on the fundamental hammock-decomposition technique of G. Frederickson. We achieve this decomposition inO(logn log*n) parallel time by usingO(n) processors. The hammock-decomposition seems to be a fundamental operation that may help in improving efficiency of many parallel (and sequential) graph algorithms.

We introduce a new algorithm for computing Euclidean shortest paths in the plane in the presence of polygonal obstacles. In particular, for a given start points, we build a planar subdivision (ashortest path map) that supports efficient queries for shortest paths froms to any destination pointt. The worst-case time complexity of our algorithm isO(kn log2n), wheren is the number of vertices describing the polygonal obstacles, andk is a parameter we call the “illumination depth” of the obstacle space. Our algorithm usesO(n) space, avoiding the possibly quadratic space complexity of methods that rely on visibility graphs. The quantityk is frequently significantly smaller thann, especially in some of the cases in which the visibility graph has quadratic size. In particular,k is bounded above by the number of different obstacles that touch any shortest path froms.

Multi-level overlay graphs represent a speed-up technique for shortest paths computation which is based on a hierarchical decomposition of a weighted directed graph G. They have been shown to be experimentally efficient, especially when applied to timetable information. However, no theoretical result on the cost of constructing, maintaining and querying multi-level overlay graphs in a dynamic environment is known. In this paper, we show theoretical properties of multi-level overlay graphs that lead us to the definition of a new data structure for the computation and the maintenance of an overlay graph of G while weight decrease or weight increase operations are performed on G. Our solution is theoretically faster than the recomputation from scratch and allows queries that can be performed more efficiently than running Dijkstra’s shortest paths algorithm on G.

Efficient shortest path algorithms are of key importance for routing and navigation systems. However, these applications are designed focusing on the requirements of motor vehicles, and therefore, finding paths in pedestrian sections of urban areas is not sufficiently supported. In addition, finding the shortest path is often not adequate for urban sidewalk routes, as users of these applications may also be interested in alternative routes that, although slightly longer, possess other desirable features and properties. According to the literature, the search for alternative routes is carried out mainly using the k-shortest paths (KSP) algorithm which represents an ordered list of all available alternatives. Even though various KSP algorithms have been proposed, to the best of our knowledge, there is no research addressing all issues inherent in a pedestrian navigation system. The purpose of this paper is to present a heuristic algorithm for graph datasets that implements a penalty-based method which, by increasing certain edge weights, effectively searches for the most accessible alternative paths in multi-route cases. To demonstrate how the algorithm works, we present experimental results on finding the most accessible paths in pedestrian sections of the historical center of Thessaloniki city.

Public transportation system is a crucial element of our society; meanwhile, GIS is widely applied in transportation and plays a significant role in the development of spatial information data. The paper is intended to illustrate an integrated application of GIS and a relational database management system (RDBMS) in a touch-screen public transportation system. In this work, we put the emphasis on the system network modeling, topology building and the algorithm of shortest path: transportation data model was defined according to GIS vector data model; the real-time topology building of transportation network was introduced and it was also the main content of database; meanwhile, bus stop structure and bus route structure was presented; the shortest path algorithm, the core of public transportation system, was described based on distance and transfer time. The paper also introduced the main functions of the system. The global algorithm was proved by taking Wuxi touch-screen public transportation system as example in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China.