Lower-bounded facility location

We study the lower-bounded facility location problem, which generalizes the classical uncapacitated facility location problem in that it comes with lower bound constraints for the number of clients assigned to a facility in the case that this facility is opened. This problem was introduced independently in the papers by Karger and Minkoff [12] and by Guha, Meyerson, and Munagala [7], both of which give bicriteria approximation algorithms for it. These bicriteria algorithms come within a constant factor of the optimal solution cost, but they also violate the lower bound constraints by a constant factor. Our result in this paper is the first true approximation algorithm for the lower-bounded facility location problem, which respects the lower bound constraints and achieves a constant approximation ratio for the objective function. The main technical idea for the design of the algorithm is a reduction to the capacitated facility location problem, which has known constant-factor approxi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TALG
• Authors: Zoya Svitkina
• Keywords: Facility Location Problem, Lower Bound Constraints, Lower-bounded Facility Location, TALG 2010