{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Exploiting Decomposition on Constraint Problems with High Tree-Width","authors":[{"name":"Matthew Kitching","slug":"matthew-kitching","given":"Matthew","family":"Kitching","affiliation":""},{"name":"Fahiem Bacchus","slug":"fahiem-bacchus","given":"Fahiem","family":"Bacchus","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"Decomposition is an effective technique for solving discrete Constraint Optimization Problems (COPs) with low tree-width. On problems with high treewidth, however, existing decomposition algorithms offer little advantage over branch and bound search (B&B). In this paper we propose a method for exploiting decomposition on problems with high treewidth. Our technique involves modifying B&B to detect and exploit decomposition on a selected subset of the problem’s objectives. Decompositions over this subset, generated during search, are exploited to compute tighter bounds allowing B&B to prune more of its search space. We present a heuristic for selecting an appropriate subset of objectives—one that readily decomposes during search and yet can still provide good bounds. We demonstrate empirically that our approach can significantly improve B&B’s performance and outperform standard decomposition algorithms on a variety of high tree-width problems.Matthew Kitching, Fahiem Bacchus","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/94","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/0094.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/94.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/bibtex/94","volume":{"slug":"2009","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2009","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/","year":2009,"location":"Pasadena, California, USA","dates":"","editors":"Hiroaki Kitano","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":null,"track":"","number":94,"pages":{"first":525,"last":530},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}