Title
Making Role Assignment Feasible: A Polynomial-Time Algorithm for Computing Ecological Colorings
Abstract
In this paper, we study the problem of ecologically coloring a graph. Intuitively, an ecological coloring of a graph is a role assignment to the nodes of the graph, such that two nodes surrounded by the same set of roles must be assigned the same role (Borgatti and Everett, 1992). We prove that, for any simple undirected graph G with n G distinct neighborhoods and for any integer k with 1 ≤ k ≤ n G , G admits an ecological coloring which uses exactly k roles, and that this coloring can be computed in polynomial time. Our result strongly contrasts with the NP-completeness result of the regular coloring problem, where it is required that two nodes with the same role must be surrounded by the same set of roles (Fiala and Paulusma, 2005). Hence, we conclude that not only the ecological coloring is easier to understand as a model of social relationships (Borgatti and Everett, 1994), but it is also feasible from a computational complexity point of view.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1007/978-3-540-92248-3_9
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Keywords
DocType
Volume
np-completeness result,computational complexity point,distinct neighborhood,simple undirected graph,ecological coloring,role assignment feasible,polynomial-time algorithm,integer k,role assignment,computing ecological colorings,k role,n g,regular coloring problem,polynomial time,computational complexity
Conference
5344
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0302-9743
1
0.40
References 
Authors
7
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
pilu crescenzi19511.52
Miriam di Ianni214417.27
Federico Greco362.06
Gianluca Rossi423521.60
Paola Vocca522524.79