Journal of the Operational Research Society (2011) 62, 2002–2012 © 2011 Operational Research Society Ltd.

y Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/11

www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/

Discrete cooperative covering problems

1 2 1
O Berman , Z Drezner and D Krass
1 2
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; and California State University-Fullerton, Fullerton, USA
A family of discrete cooperative covering problems is analysed in this paper. Each facility emits a signal
that decays by the distance and each demand point observes the total signal emitted by all facilities.
A demand point is covered if its cumulative signal exceeds a given threshold. We wish to maximize
coverage by selecting locations for p facilities from a given set of potential sites. Two other problems that
can be solved by the max-cover approach are the equivalents to set covering and p-centre problems. The
problems are formulated, analysed and solved on networks. Optimal and heuristic algorithms
are proposed and extensive computational experiments reported.
Journal of the Operational Research Society (2011) 62, 2002–2012. doi:10.1057/jors.2010.176
Published online 15 December 2010

Keywords: cooperative cover; facility location; multiple facilities

1. Introduction chosen from a finite set of locations. We note that in

One of the classic concepts in facility location literature is
that of ‘coverage’, where a customer is considered to be
covered if a facility is located within a certain coverage
radius of the customer. The literature on coverage prob-
lems is quite rich; for a review the reader is referred to
Berman et al (2010b); Schilling et al (1993); Daskin (1995);
Current et al (2002); Plastria (2002). Note that under the
standard coverage framework, only one facility (namely
the closest one) determines whether a customer node is
covered or not. As discussed in Berman et al (2010a) this
‘individual cover’ assumption may not be appropriate in
many potential application areas.
For example, in a case where facilities emit physical sig-
nals (light, sound, etc), each customer receives signals from
all facilities, not just the closest one. ‘Coverage’ occurs
when the total (aggregated) signal received by the customer
exceeds certain acceptable threshold. Note that in this case
the facilities combine (ie, cooperate) to provide coverage.
We refer to this as the ‘cooperative cover’ framework. This
framework occurs for the case of non-physical signals as
well, for example, in the case of the backup coverage models
(Hogan and Revelle, 1986). We refer the reader to Berman
et al (2010a) for further discussion.
The cooperative covering problem in the plane was
introduced in Berman et al (2010a). The goal of the
current paper is to analyse the cooperative cover
framework for the discrete location case—that is, when
the set of potential facility locations is discrete must be

Correspondence: Z Drezner, College of Business and Economics,
California State University-Fullerton, Fullerton, CA 92834, USA.
E-mail: zdrezner@fullerton.edu
Berman et al (2010a) it was shown that the results
of ignoring the cooperative aspect of the coverage
(ie, using the individual cover model in a setting where
cooperative cover is more appropriate) can be quite
dramatic—leading to solutions that require twice (or
more!) the number of facilities that are necessary to
cover the same amount of demand when the cooperation
is properly taken into account. Similar results are
obtained for the discrete case in the current paper (see
Section 4.1).
The plan for the paper is as follows. In Section 2 we
formulate three variants of the cooperative cover problem,
all of them are direct extensions of the standard cover
counterparts. In Section 3 exact and approximate algori-
thmic approaches are discussed. An extensive series of
computational experiments is presented in Section 4. We
close with some concluding remarks in Section 5.
2. Formulation
Let N be a discrete set of customer locations (‘nodes’).
Demand P weight wi40 is associated with node iAN, and
W ¼ ni¼1 wi represents the total available demand. We
assume that X is a discrete set of potential facility locations
and that a subset of X of cardinality p for the location of
the source points (facilities) is sought. Without loss of
generality, we can assume XCN. For i, jAN let d(i, j)
represent the distance between i and j (any valid distance
metric can be used here). One possible representation of
this setting is to view N as the nodes of a network G with
link set L and shortest distance metric d(i, j)i, jAN where
facilities must be located at nodes.
 O Berman et al—Discrete cooperative covering problems 2003

As in Berman et al (2010a), we consider the following 2.2. The problems

mechanism of coverage: each source point j emits a signal
Problems 1, 2 and 3 are formulated as integer programming
that decays over distance according to some known non-
problems using the following two sets of decision variables:
negative and non-increasing function of distance f(d), for
example f(d ) ¼ 1/d 2. Each demand point iAN is affected 
1j if a facility is located at node j
by the sum of the signals from xj ¼
P all source points, that is, the 0 j otherwise
total signal at i is given by pj¼1 fðdði; jÞÞ. The signal at a 
demand point must exceed a certain threshold T in order 1 j if node i is covered
yi ¼
for the demand point to be covered, that is, demand point 0j otherwise
iAN is covered if and only if
The problems are formulated for a general decay func-
X
p
tion f(d). For example, f(d) ¼ 1/d 2.
fðdði; jÞÞXT ð1Þ
j¼1
Problem 1: Cooperative Location Set Cover Problem
The summation is referred to the as aggregation operator (CLSCP) is to find the minimum number of source points
since it aggregates signal strengths from individual facil- p required to attain a given coverage aW (0oap1) with
ities. Of course, other aggregation operators (eg, max, a given threshold T.
truncated sum, etc) can also be considered. However, in the ( )
Xn
current paper, as in Berman et al (2010a), we focus on the Problem P1 : min xj
summation operator. i¼1
We note that the mechanism above represents a direct X
n
generalization of the standard cover framework. Indeed, in s:t: fðdij Þxj XTyi i2N
the standard framework, for each potential location jAN a j¼1
coverage radius Rj is specified such that a demand point X
n
iAN is covered from j if and only if d(i, j) oRj. We note yi wi XaW
that when signal strength functions are given by fIj (d) ¼ T i¼1
if dpRj and 0 otherwise, for each jAN, then (1) represents xj 2 f0; 1g; yi 2 f0; 1g i; j 2 N ð2Þ
the standard (individual) coverage condition.
Three cooperative cover models are considered, which When a ¼ 1 the problem is called the Cooperative Set
are direct generalizations of the corresponding problems in Covering Problem (CSCP). We also note that with the
the classical cover framework: (i) finding the minimum signal strength function fI(d ) defined earlier, this problem
number of source points required to attain a given cove- becomes the standard (individual cover) Location Set
rage, (ii) covering the maximum weight of demand points Cover Problem (LSCP).
with p source points, and (iii) for a given number of source
points p, find the maximum possible threshold that yields Problem 2: Cooperative Maximum Covering Location
a given coverage. These problems are described in more Problem (CMCLP) with p source points (facilities) and a
detail below. given threshold T is given by
( )
Xn
2.1. Notation Problem P2 : max yi w i
i¼1
Let
X
n
s:t: fðdij Þxj XTyi i2N
N be the set of nodes,
j¼1
wi be the weight associated with
P node iAN,
W be the total weight W ¼ i2N wi , X
n
xj ¼ p
p be the number of source points (known or j¼1
unknown)
P be the set {1, . . . , p}, xj 2 f0; 1g; yi 2 f0; 1g i; j 2 N ð3Þ
dij be the distance between nodes iAN and jAP,
This problem generalizes Maximal Cover Location Pro-
f(d) be the strength of the signal at distance d
blem (MCLP), which is obtained when the signal strength
(monotonically decreasing),
fI(d ) is used in the formulation above.
fIj (d) be the signal stregth used in the standard
individual cover models,
fij ¼ f(dij), Problem 3: Generalized Cooperative p-Centre (GCpC) is
T be the threshold for coverage. to find the maximum possible threshold T that yields a
2004 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62, No. 11
given coverage aW with a given number of p facilities
Problem P3 : maxfTg
Xn
s:t: fðdij Þxj XTyi i2N
j¼1
X
n
wi yi XaW
i¼1
Xn
xj ¼ p
j¼1
xj 2 f0; 1g; yi 2 f0; 1g i; j 2 N
For a ¼ 1 we obtain the Cooperative p-Centre Problem
(CpCP). As before, with the signal strength function fI(d),
the problem becomes the standard p-centre problem.
We assume that a node can hold at most one facility.
While this assumption can be made without loss of gene-
rality with the ‘standard’ set covering, maximum covering
or p-centre problems because there is no advantage to
locating more than one facility on the same node, such is
not the case for the cooperative covering case. In fact,
as the following theorem shows, a solution involving
co-location can outperform a non-co-located solution by
an arbitrary large value.
Theorem 1: When more than one facility can be located
at the same node, the optimal value of the objective func-
tion can increase by an arbitrary large value.
Proof: We prove the theorem by an example. Consider
the following star network with n nodes. Node #1 is linked
to all other nodes with a link of length 1, and there are
no other links. The distance between node #1 and all
other nodes is equal to 1, and the distance between two
nodes (neither is node #1) is equal to 2. We use the
decay function f(d) ¼ 1/d 2, T ¼ 1.5 and all wi ¼ 1. Consider
the CMCLP where p ¼ 2 facilities need to be located.
When both facilities are located at node #1, the signal
covers all n nodes because the cumulative signal is equal
to 2. Since the maximum possible cover is n, this is the
optimal solution. When no two facilities can be located
at the same node, the total maximum coverage is equal
to 3. To show this, consider locating one facility on node
#1 and a second facility on another node. Only these two
nodes are covered because all other nodes receive a signal
of 1.25 and are not covered. If both facilities are located
on nodes different from node #1, node #1 is covered by a
signal of 2, and the nodes where the facilities are located
are also covered. All other nodes receive a signal of 0.5
and are not covered. Therefore, the maximum possible
cover is equal to 3. The ratio between the two solutions is
n/3 which can be made arbitrarily large by selecting the
appropriate n. The same example can be easily extended to
Problems 2 and 3. &
Of course, the co-locations can easily be represented in
the model above by creating p replications of each potential
facility location, all located at 0 distance from each other.
However, this obviously, significantly increases the dimen-
sionality of the models.
The following theorem was proven in Berman et al
(2010a) for these problems in the plane. The same proof
applies to the network case as well.
ð4Þ
Theorem 2: Assume the total available weight W increa-
ses at most polynomially with the number of customer
locations n. For a given accuracy of A40, suppose an
optimal algorithm with worst case performance of O(C(n)) is
available for the solution of one of the three problems
(1, 2 or 3), where C(n) is some function of instance size. Then
the other two problems can be optimally solved in time of at
most, O(C(n) log n).
As remarked in Berman et al (2010a) the reduction
arguments in the proof of the previous result can be
applied to heuristic procedures as well, that is, if a heuristic
procedure exists for one of the three problems, a procedure
with similar performance and running time exists for the
other problems as well. We can thus concentrate on deri-
ving efficient exact or approximate algorithms for any one
of the problems above.
3. Solution approaches
We concentrate on solving Problem 2. The other problems
can be solved by applying Theorem 2.
3.1. Exact approaches
We note that since Problem 2 was formulated as a linear
Integer Program (IP), any off-the-shelf IP solver is capa-
ble of producing a solution to this problem. The stan-
dard (individual cover) (MCLP) is known to be ‘integer
friendly’—that is, the optimal solution to LP relaxation
frequently has only integral entries, thus providing the
solution to the IP as well. We note that in view of the first
constraint in Problem 2, the integer-friendly property is not
likely to hold in the current case. Computational results
using CPLEX IP solver are presented in Section 4 below.
Indeed it appears that (CMCLP) is significantly harder to
solve than its standard (individual cover) counterpart.
3.1.1. Lagrangian relaxation. Since Lagrangian relaxa-
tion is very efficient for solving the standard maximal
covering problems (Daskin, 1995, 2006), it seems natural
 O Berman et al—Discrete cooperative covering problems 2005

( )
to attempt the same approach in the current framework. Xn
1X n
FðlÞ ¼ max ð1  li Þyi þ li
To this end, we formulate Problem 2 as a Lagrangian 2 i¼1
i¼1
relaxation approach embedded in a branch and bound
Xn  
algorithm. 1
¼ maxf0; 1  li g þ li :
The Lagrangian problem is: i¼1
2

( " ! #)
Xn X
n
Problem LðlÞ: LðlÞ ¼ max wi yi þ li fðdij Þxj  Tyi
i¼1 j¼1
X
n
s:t: xj ¼ p
j¼1

li X0
xj 2 f0; 1gyi 2 f0; 1g i; j 2 N: ð5Þ

The objection function of L(l) can be written as The minimum of F(l) is obtained for li ¼ 1 and its value
is n/2. The gap for this example is n/2, which can be made
( ( ) )
X
n X
n Xn as large as desired.
max ðwi  li TÞyi þ li fðdij Þ xj 
i¼1 j¼1 i¼1
3.2. Heuristic algorithms
Obviously, the optimal solution of L(l) is: We design algorithms to solve Problem 2. The other pro-
 blems can be solved by applying the algorithm for the solu-
1jwi Xli T tion of Problem 2 (Theorem 2).
yi ¼
0jotherwise Once a set P of p nodes is selected, the value of the
objective function F(P) can be directly calculated. There-
Pn
and xj ¼ 1 for the p largest values of i¼1 li fðdij Þ.
fore, a reasonable neighborhood for the search is all
The Lagrangian dual can be solved using subgradient opti- possible exchanges of one selected node with one non-
mization. selected node. This is similar to the exchange algorithm
We were somewhat disappointed that the bound suggested by Teitz and Bart (1968) for the solution of the
obtained by the Lagrangian relaxation is very poor. For p-median problem. The cardinality of such a neighborhood
example, for the smallest test problem (n ¼ 100, p ¼ 5) the is p(np).
optimal solution is 10 (see Table 2). The Lagrangian bound In preparation for any of the heuristic search algorithms,
at the root is equal to 18 leading to a very ineffective upper the distance matrix {dij} between nodes is calculated and
bound. In fact, total enumeration for this problem was a second matrix with the values fij ¼ f(dij) is calculated.
much faster than the branch and bound approach based on Note that if the decay function used is f(d) ¼ 1/d 2 (or any
the Lagrangian relaxation because only a small number of function which is infinite at zero distance), then when
branches were eliminated. The following example shows dij ¼ 0 we use fij ¼ T. This guarantees that each node
that indeed the upper bound of the Lagrangian relaxation covers itself.
can be very poor. In conclusion, it appears that the
Lagrangian relaxation is not an effective approach for
solving discrete cooperative cover models. 3.2.1. The ascent approach. The ascent algorithm is
obvious (for complete details see, for example, Berman
et al, 2009). We show how to execute it in an efficient way.
3.1.2. An example for which Lagrangian relaxation yields a Let P be a selected set of p nodes. Calculating the value
poor bound. Let wi ¼ 1, T ¼ 1 and f(dij) ¼ 1/2p. No point is of the objective function directly requires O(np) time.
covered by selecting p facilities (total signal is 0.5), thus the Therefore, calculating the p(np) values of the objective
optimal solution is 0. Problem L for a given set of liX0 function in the neighborhood directly requires O[np2(np)]
time. We can streamline the calculation and reduce the
( ( ) ) complexity by a factor of p. We maintain a vector
Xn X
n Xn
1 P of the
FðlÞ ¼ max ð1  li Þyi þ li xj  cumulative signal received by each node: Si ¼ j2P fij .
2p
i¼1 j¼1 i¼1 Once
P Si is known, the value of the objective function is
Pn i:Si XT wi . When a node kAP is taken out and a node leP
Since j¼1 xj ¼ p; is added to P, the new value of Si is Sifik þ fil, which is
2006 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62, No. 11
calculated in O(1). Therefore, calculating the value of the
objective function following such an exchange requires
O(n) time and evaluating all exchanges in the neighbor-
hood requires 0[np(np)] time. To avoid accumulation of
round off errors, the values Si for i ¼ 1, . . . , n are
recalculated at the end of each iteration in O(np) time.
The complexity of one iteration is therefore O[np(np)].
3.2.2. The improved ascent approach. We noticed that the
ascent algorithm did not perform very well especially
when the cover was not much greater than the value of p.
Every random selection of p nodes covers at least the
p selected nodes. Therefore, only a few iterations are
performed by the ascent algorithm when the cover does
not exceed p by much. If all wi ¼ 1 (or all of them are
integer), then the cover must be integer and an improve-
ment in the value of the objective function must be at
least 1. A local maximum obtained by the ascent app-
roach may be improved if we modify the algorithm to
break ties between two solutions that have the same value
of the objective function. This can be done by creating
a well defined hierarchy between solutions that have
the same cover. Let the set of all non covered nodes for
a set P be N0 (P). For every iAN0 (P)SipT. As a secondary
value HðPÞ ¼ mini2N 0 ðPÞ ½T  Si  is calculated. Two sets
P1 and P2 satisfy P14P2 if either F(P1)4F(P2), or when
F(P1) ¼ F(P2) and H(P1)oH(P2). This means that if two
solutions have the same cover, the solution in which the
non-covered node closest to the threshold is ‘closer’ to it is
preferred. Solutions that contain a node ‘very close’ to the
threshold are more likely to generate an improving move
in subsequent iterations.
Two variants of the improved approach are suggested. In
Variant #1 we just prefer to select a solution with a lower
value of H(P) when there is a tie among the best improving
solutions. In Variant #2 we proceed with the ascent itera-
tions to solutions with the same cover but with a smaller
value of H(P). The algorithm is terminated when neither an
improving exchange nor an exchange leading to a better
value of H(P) with the same cover exist.
Variant #1 When there is a tie between the best improving
exchanges, the exchange with the lowest value of H(P) is
selected.
Variant #2 In addition to the rule of Variant #1, if there
is no improving exchange but an exchange with the same
cover and a lower value of H(P) exists, a move to a solu-
tion with the same cover and the lowest value of H(P) is
performed.
Variant #2 allows the ascent approach to possibly move
to solutions with the same cover if no improvement is
possible, with the hope that following a few iterations of
this type an improving move will be found. Also, as is the
case for Variant #1, even when an improved solution
exists in the neighborhood, we would prefer to move
to a solution with one non-covered node close to the
threshold, hoping that this node will be covered in
subsequent moves.
Note that these variants can operate as a regular ascent
algorithm by using F(P)AH(P) for a small enough A as
the objective function.
3.2.3. Simulated annealing. The simulated annealing
(Kirkpatrick et al, 1983) simulates the cooling process
of hot melted metals. We follow the approach adopted in
Berman et al (2009). The variant used in this paper
depends on three parameters: the starting temperature T0,
the number of iterations I, and the factor ao1 by which
the temperature is lowered every iteration.
1. Set the temperature T to T0. Randomly select a set P
of p nodes, and set the best found solution to F(P). Set
the iteration counter to zero.
2. Randomly select a node in P for removal and a node in
NP for addition to P.
3. Calculate DF, the change in the value of the objective
function by this exchange.
4. If DFX0, then
— Perform the exchange.
— If the new F(P) is better than the best found solution,
update the best found solution.
— Go to Step 6.
5. If DFo0, calculate d ¼ DF/T. Perform the exchange
with probability ed.
6. Multiply T by the factor a, increase the iteration counter
by one, and return to Step 2 unless the number of itera-
tions reaches I.
Note that calculating DF can be done in O(n) time by
maintaining a vector Si as explained in Section 3.2.1.
We use the cover F(P) as the value of the objective
function. There is no need to consider H(P) to break ties
as suggested in the improved ascent algorithms because
a move to a solution with the same cover will be accepted
regardless of the temperature.
Following extensive experiments with the 40 (Beasley,
1990) problems, and attempting not to exceed the time
required for the ascent algorithm by more than 100 fold,
the following parameters were selected: T0 ¼ 10, I ¼ 3000
p(np) and a ¼ 15/I.
3.2.4. Tabu search. Tabu search (Glover, 1977, 1986;
Glover and Laguna, 1997) proceeds from the terminal

solution of the ascent algorithm by allowing downward
moves hoping to obtain a better solution in subsequent
iterations. A tabu list of forbidden moves is maintained.
Tabu moves stay in the tabu list for tabu tenure iterations.
To avoid cycling, the forbidden moves are the reverse
of recent moves. Similarly to the ascent algorithm, the
changes in the value of the objective function in the neigh-
bourhood are evaluated. If a move leads to a solution
better than the best found solution, this move is executed
and the tabu list emptied. If none of the moves leads to
a solution better than the best found solution, the best
permissible move (disregarding moves in the tabu list),
whether improving or not, is executed.
Each move involves removing a node in P and
substituting it with a node not in P. The tabu list consists
of nodes recently removed from P so they are not allowed
to re-enter P. An exchange between two nodes is permi-
ssible if the node entering P is not in the tabu list. The
maximum possible number of entries in the tabu list is np.
Following extensive experiments we used for tabu tenure
a randomly generated value between 10% and 50% of np
rounded down. The tabu tenure is randomly generated in
each iteration. A wide range for the tabu tenure was shown
to yield good results in Drezner and Marcoulides (2009).
We tested three variants of the tabu search. One employs
the regular ascent approach to compare two solutions and
the other two employ Variant #1 or Variant #2 of the
improved ascent criterion for comparing two solutions.
The results by using Variant #2 of the improved ascent cri-
terion were the best on our set of test problems. Therefore,
we recommend to apply Variant #2 improved ascent
approach in the tabu search.
Let h be the number of iterations by the Variant #2 of the
improved ascent approach. In order to require a run time
comparable with the Variant #2 of the improved ascent
approach, the tabu algorithm was run for an additional
29h iterations. Each problem was solved 10 times.
3.2.5. A genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms (Holland,
1975; Drezner and Drezner, 2005) simulate the evolution
of species and the survival of the fittest. Constructing
a good genetic algorithm for our problem turned out to be
quite a challenge. Following extensive experiments and
testing many of the improvements proposed in Drezner
and Drezner (2005), we recommend the following para-
meters of the genetic
n algorithm.
o We maintain a popula-
tion of pop ¼ max 2n p ; 100 solutions (a solution is a list
of p nodes) and ran the algorithm for 10pop generations.
At each generation, two parents are randomly selected
from the population and produce an offspring. We used
the distance criterion (Drezner and Marcoulides (2003);
Drezner and Drezner, 2005) for parent selection. Specifi-
cally, we randomly selected one parent and selected two
candidates for the second parent. The distances between
O Berman et al—Discrete cooperative covering problems 2007
the two candidates and the first parent (distance between
two solutions is defined as the number of different selected
nodes in the two solutions) are calculated, and the farther
candidate is selected as the second parent. If the offspring
is better than the worst population member, it replaces it
unless it is identical to an existing population member.
3.2.6. The merging process. The crucial part of the algo-
rithm is the merging process of two parents to produce an
offspring. Many genetic algorithms use a crossover ope-
rator for the creation of the offspring. We followed the
approach suggested in Berman and Drezner (2007) and
Alp et al (2003), which takes advantage of the special
structure of our problem.
Each parent consists of a list of p nodes. The two lists of
p nodes are merged and the result is a list of cardinality
ppp0 p2p. When there are c nodes common between the
two parents, p0 ¼ 2pc. Four additional nodes are added to
the list as a mutation forming a list L of p0 þ 4 nodes (the
selection of four additional nodes is a result of extensive
experiments with various numbers of additional nodes).
The c common nodes must be part of the offspring. The
remaining pc nodes need to be selected from the
remaining p0 þ 4c ¼ 2( pc) þ 4 nodes. This means that
all the nodes which are not in L cannot join the offspring.
Selecting these pc nodes is done by the Variant #2 of the
ascent algorithm based on 2( pc) þ 4 candidate nodes. We
tried the ascent algorithm and the two variants of the
improved ascent algorithm and Variant #2 clearly provided
the best results. This restricted ascent algorithm is faster
than the regular ascent algorithm because it involves the
selection of pc nodes out of 2( pc) þ 4 nodes rather than
selecting p out of n nodes.
3.2.7. The improved genetic algorithm. We also propose
to enhance the genetic algorithm similarly to the sugges-
tion in Drezner (2005). The idea is to generate a better
starting population and this is achieved by applying
Variant #2 on each starting population member. To run
the algorithm with population pop 10 times requires 10pop
applications of Variant #2. Therefore, if we used a popu-
lation of 100 for all problems, it will require 1000 appli-
cations of Variant #2, which takes much longer time than
the total time required for the application of Variant #2 as
reported in Table 3. We therefore experimented with
a population of pop ¼ 30. Running this improved version
of the genetic algorithm 10 times requires a longer time
than 300 runs of the Variant #2 improved ascent algo-
rithm because the time of the evolution is added to the
time of the population construction.
Another way to interpret running the improved genetic
algorithm 10 times is a generation of 300 solutions by
variant #2. These 300 solutions are divided into 10
2008 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62, No. 11

populations of 30 solutions each, and the evolutionary Table 1 Comparison of cooperative and individual cover
process is applied on each of these 10 populations for 300 solutions
generations attempting to improve the best solution in each n p Optimal solution Rel. difference (%)
population by generated offspring (each requires a
restricted Variant #2 improved ascent algorithm). The Coop cover Indiv cover
improved genetic algorithm requires longer run time than
running Variant #2 300 times because of the added time for 100 5 10 6 67
100 10 18 13 38
the evolution. 100 10 15 13 15
100 20 20 20 0
100 33 35 33 6
4. Computational experiments 200 5 16 11 45
200 10 24 16 50
We tested the algorithms on the set of 40 problems proposed 200 20 32 20 60
by Beasley (1990) for testing algorithms for p-median 200 40 47 40 18
200 67 75 67 12
problems. We used f(d) ¼ 1/d 2 and T ¼ 0.01p106.
The following computational experiments were per-
formed:

K Comparison of cooperative cover and individual cover Table 2 Solving max-cover problems by CPLEX
solutions. The results are reported in Section 4.1 and
in Table 1. n p Result Time (sec) n p Result Time (sec)
K Optimal solutions to the cooperative cover model using 100 5 10* 0.03 500 5 38 **
CPLEX. These results are reported in Section 4.2 and 100 10 18* 0.02 500 10 42w **
in Table 2. 100 10 15* 0.02 500 50 105 **
K Heuristic solutions to the cooperative cover model. These 100 20 20* 0.01 500 100 146* 1.93
results are reported in Section 4.3 and in Tables 3–5. 100 33 35* 0.02 500 167 187w **
200 5 16* 7.21 600 5 52 **
200 10 24* 3.07 600 10 65 **
200 20 32* 0.13 600 60 134 **
200 40 47* 0.07 600 120 190w **
4.1. Comparison of cooperative cover and individual cover 200 67 75* 0.08 600 200 211* 122.84
solutions 300 5 27w ** 700 5 65 **
300 10 25w ** 700 10 61 **
The purpose of this set of experiments was to compare the 300 30 58w ** 700 70 160w **
optimal solutions to the cooperative and individual cover 300 60 80* 0.31 700 140 223 **
models. Specifically, we wanted to estimate the ‘penalty’ of 300 100 120* 0.30 800 5 82 **
400 5 35w ** 800 10 81 **
using the classic individual cover objective when the 400 10 44w ** 800 80 174 **
cooperative cover objective is more appropriate. Clearly, 400 40 71 ** 900 5 109 **
the value of the cooperative cover solution is always at 400 80 112* 1.03 900 10 117 **
least as large as the value of the individual cover solution. 400 133 144* 2.52 900 90 205 **
However, for the practical applications, it is the size of *Optimal.
the gap between the two that is important: a large gap **Run terminated after 1 h.
w
implies that recognizing that a given situation requires the Best known.
cooperative rather than the individual cover framework is
very important.
We used first 10 (Beasley, 1990) problems in these
experiments (the ones consisting of 100 and 200 node application is one of the most important decisions a loca-
networks with various numbers of facilities). Each instance tion modeller has to make.
was solved to optimality using the cooperative and indivi-
dual (standard) cover objectives. The results are presented
4.2. Optimal solutions to the cooperative cover model
in Table 1. The relative difference between the coopera-
using CPLEX
tive and individual cover optimal solutions ranges from
0 to 67% with the average difference being 31%. This In this section we demonstrate the difficulty of solving the
shows that, as in the continuous location case described integer programming formulation for the cooperative
in Berman et al (2010a), the differences between the cover model to optimality. CPLEX was applied to solve
cooperative and individual cover solutions is quite large the integer programming formulation (Problem P2). The
and the choice of the appropriate framework for a given results are summarized in Table 2. If no optimal solution
 O Berman et al—Discrete cooperative covering problems 2009

Table 3 Solving max-cover problems by ascent algorithms

n p Best known Ascent (1000 runs) Variant 1 (1000 runs) Variant 2 (300 runs)

w z Time (min) w z Time (min) w z Time (min)

100 5 10* 973 0.27 0.05 942 0.58 0.05 283 0.57 0.02
100 10 18* 1000 0.00 0.14 1000 0.00 0.15 300 0.00 0.07
100 10 15* 1000 0.00 0.09 1000 0.00 0.10 300 0.00 0.06
100 20 20* 1000 0.00 0.04 1000 0.00 0.04 300 0.00 0.18
100 33 35* 1000 0.00 0.10 1000 0.00 0.10 300 0.00 0.42
200 5 16* 964 0.25 0.18 970 0.24 0.21 299 0.04 0.07
200 10 24* 962 0.17 0.64 883 0.54 0.72 272 0.39 0.25
200 20 32* 143 2.68 1.26 198 2.51 1.44 261 0.41 1.06
200 40 47* 1000 0.00 1.51 1000 0.00 1.64 300 0.00 2.96
200 67 75* 421 0.77 1.88 505 0.66 2.04 300 0.00 6.15
300 5 27 218 3.08 0.53 383 2.30 0.67 300 0.00 0.25
300 10 25 977 0.09 1.58 948 0.21 1.89 300 0.00 0.86
300 30 58 0 11.05 9.99 0 8.63 12.06 7 2.65 7.18
300 60 80* 1000 0.00 18.10 1000 0.00 20.24 300 0.00 23.23
300 100 120* 768 0.21 19.08 832 0.15 20.82 300 0.00 56.42
400 5 35 817 0.84 1.01 746 1.35 1.22 272 0.53 0.41
400 10 44 990 0.05 3.64 985 0.06 4.39 297 0.02 1.38
400 40 72 0 11.80 28.55 0 10.30 34.98 2 4.08 22.27
400 80 112* 0 2.50 60.53 0 2.46 67.62 34 0.85 78.00
400 133 144* 0 4.37 20.03 0 4.35 22.09 162 0.40 167.24
500 5 39 82 2.82 1.63 119 2.68 1.91 247 0.85 0.76
500 10 42 926 0.24 5.39 950 0.16 6.73 299 0.01 2.36
500 50 106 0 5.01 104.97 1 4.28 125.69 8 2.10 56.25
500 100 146* 914 0.06 169.35 915 0.06 190.50 300 0.00 200.16
500 167 187 0 6.59 54.97 0 6.47 62.79 5 1.36 451.28
600 5 54 186 2.23 2.44 89 1.91 2.96 108 1.23 0.97
600 10 66 130 1.94 8.44 354 1.47 10.38 237 0.56 3.87
600 60 137 0 2.40 259.15 26 2.93 279.15 190 0.33 122.45
600 120 190 0 7.46 387.20 0 6.48 442.78 28 0.68 488.21
600 200 211* 0 3.45 68.27 0 3.40 77.96 84 0.53 888.94
700 5 70 614 1.00 3.69 741 0.78 4.34 247 0.49 1.42
700 10 67 64 2.98 11.37 212 2.08 14.34 241 0.50 5.12
700 70 160 126 0.87 486.07 104 2.31 525.87 169 0.38 233.20
700 140 225 0 15.98 507.41 0 13.49 634.45 0 2.28 843.46
800 5 89 929 0.21 4.48 861 0.29 5.49 278 0.13 1.91
800 10 86 79 3.40 16.69 138 2.52 19.99 76 1.64 6.63
800 80 177 0 1.63 801.64 5 2.35 901.21 157 0.31 386.80
900 5 118 251 1.78 5.71 249 1.72 7.02 86 1.54 2.21
900 10 131 134 2.79 22.76 136 2.45 27.41 80 1.53 9.19
900 90 209 0 1.66 1340.74 11 3.45 1386.34 113 0.45 624.00
Average 441.7 2.57 110.78 457.6 2.39 122.68 196.1 0.67 117.52
*Optimal by Table 2
w
Number of times best known solution found.
z
Percent of average solution below the best known solution.

was found within 1 h, CPLEX was terminated and the
current best solution recorded. This solution was then
compared to the heuristic solutions for the same instances
that are described in the following section.
While all instances with np200 were solved to optimality
in a relatively short run time, CPLEX failed to find optimal
solutions to the majority of instances with nX300 within
1 h of CPU time. It is interesting to note that for the
majority of instances with np500, CPLEX found the best
known solution.
4.3. Computational results with heuristic algorithms
The six heuristic algorithms were coded in Fortran,
compiled by Intel Fortran 9.0 and ran on a 2.8 GHz
Pentium 4 desktop computer with 256 MB RAM. The
ascent algorithm and Variant #1 of the improved ascent
were replicated 1000 times for each of the problems. In
order to require comparable run times by the Variant #2 of
the ascent algorithm, it was run 300 times. The simulated
annealing, tabu search and the genetic algorithm were run
2010 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62, No. 11

Table 4 Solving max-cover problems by metaheuristics

n p Best known Sim. annealing (10 runs) Tabu search (10 runs) Genetic alg. (10 runs)

w z Time (min) w z Time (min) w z Time (min)

100 5 10* 10 0.00 0.12 10 0.00 0.02 10 0.00 0.02

100 10 18* 10 0.00 0.30 10 0.00 0.07 10 0.00 0.07
100 10 15* 10 0.00 0.29 10 0.00 0.06 10 0.00 0.07
100 20 20* 10 0.00 0.59 10 0.00 0.01 10 0.00 0.09
100 33 35* 10 0.00 0.89 10 0.00 0.36 10 0.00 1.11
200 5 16* 10 0.00 0.43 10 0.00 0.07 10 0.00 0.05
200 10 24* 10 0.00 0.97 10 0.00 0.25 10 0.00 0.12
200 20 32* 10 0.00 2.14 10 0.00 0.96 10 0.00 0.49
200 40 47* 10 0.00 4.62 10 0.00 2.90 10 0.00 6.01
200 67 75* 10 0.00 7.07 10 0.00 5.98 10 0.00 12.45
300 5 27 10 0.00 1.09 10 0.00 0.25 10 0.00 0.12
300 10 25 10 0.00 2.20 10 0.00 0.89 10 0.00 0.36
300 30 58 5 0.86 7.92 8 0.34 7.60 10 0.00 4.40
300 60 80* 10 0.00 17.85 10 0.00 23.22 10 0.00 47.50
300 100 120* 10 0.00 28.05 10 0.00 51.38 10 0.00 51.28
400 5 35 10 0.00 1.94 10 0.00 0.40 10 0.00 0.37
400 10 44 10 0.00 4.14 10 0.00 1.45 10 0.00 0.66
400 40 72 10 0.00 19.12 9 0.14 22.97 10 0.00 17.35
400 80 112* 0 1.79 43.42 8 0.18 83.06 0 0.89 125.84
400 133 144* 0 0.90 67.72 7 0.21 165.48 10 0.00 191.51
500 5 39 10 0.00 2.94 10 0.00 0.69 10 0.00 0.75
500 10 42 10 0.00 6.13 10 0.00 2.39 10 0.00 1.09
500 50 106 10 0.00 40.08 10 0.00 58.73 10 0.00 34.62
500 100 146* 10 0.00 88.77 10 0.00 193.32 10 0.00 329.37
500 167 187 0 2.62 136.45 1 0.91 442.58 10 0.00 329.15
600 5 54 10 0.00 4.38 10 0.00 1.20 10 0.00 1.49
600 10 66 10 0.00 9.33 10 0.00 3.92 10 0.00 2.16
600 60 137 10 0.00 72.05 10 0.00 126.63 10 0.00 71.04
600 120 190 0 1.32 152.86 1 0.47 502.91 4 0.32 451.57
600 200 211* 0 1.42 237.27 5 0.24 905.08 10 0.00 790.03
700 5 70 10 0.00 6.00 10 0.00 1.52 10 0.00 2.45
700 10 67 10 0.00 11.92 10 0.00 4.77 10 0.00 3.27
700 70 160 10 0.00 115.30 10 0.00 232.63 10 0.00 144.35
700 140 225 0 1.42 243.73 1 1.11 826.92 0 0.62 726.95
800 5 89 10 0.00 8.05 10 0.00 1.96 10 0.00 3.38
800 10 86 10 0.00 16.48 10 0.00 6.81 10 0.00 4.43
800 80 177 10 0.00 171.03 10 0.00 408.75 10 0.00 233.35
900 5 118 10 0.00 10.68 10 0.00 2.13 10 0.00 4.27
900 10 131 10 0.00 22.58 10 0.00 10.48 7 0.69 5.75
900 90 209 10 0.00 251.84 10 0.00 647.09 10 0.00 330.07
Average 8.38 0.26 45.47 9.00 0.09 118.70 9.28 0.06 98.24
*Optimal by Table 2.
w
Number of times best known solution found.
z
Percent of average solution below the best known solution.

10 times each for every problem. The results are summa-
rized in Tables 3 and 4.
In Table 3 we report the results for the three variants of
the ascent algorithms. For each problem we depict: the best
known solution, the number of times that the best known
solution was found, the percentage of the average result
below the best known solution and the time required for all
runs in minutes.
The ascent algorithm failed to find the best known
solution for 12 problems while Variant #1 failed to find it
for eight problems and Variant #2 for only one problem (it
found a solution of 224 four times for the n ¼ 700, p ¼ 140
problem). The average result of the ascent algorithm was
2.57% below the best known solution while the average
result of Variant #1 was 2.39% below the best known
solution, and for Variant #2 it was only 0.67% below the
best known solution. The ascent algorithm found the best
known solution in 44.2% of the runs while Variant #1
found it in 45.8% of the runs and Variant #2 found it in
65.4% of the runs. Run time was about 11% longer for
Variant #1 than the ‘standard’ ascent because some effort
is required to calculate H(P) and on the average it required
 O Berman et al—Discrete cooperative covering problems 2011

Table 5 Solving max-cover problems by the improved genetic algorithm

n p BK w z Time (min) n p BK w z Time (min)

100 5 10* 10 0.00 0.02 500 5 39 10 0.00 0.80

100 10 18* 10 0.00 0.10 500 10 42 10 0.00 2.55
100 10 15* 10 0.00 0.06 500 50 106 10 0.00 57.87
100 20 20* 10 0.00 0.21 500 100 146* 10 0.00 319.15
100 33 35* 10 0.00 0.81 500 167 187 9 0.05 471.12
200 5 16* 10 0.00 0.08 600 5 54 10 0.00 1.03
200 10 24* 10 0.00 0.26 600 10 66 10 0.00 4.03
200 20 32* 10 0.00 1.11 600 60 137 10 0.00 126.77
200 40 47* 10 0.00 5.33 600 120 190 9 0.05 527.68
200 67 75* 10 0.00 11.18 600 200 211* 10 0.00 1001.94
300 5 27 10 0.00 0.26 700 5 70 10 0.00 1.50
300 10 25 10 0.00 0.88 700 10 67 10 0.00 5.49
300 30 58 10 0.00 7.82 700 70 160 10 0.00 250.33
300 60 80* 10 0.00 42.12 700 140 225 2 0.36 900.18
300 100 120* 10 0.00 57.68 800 5 89 10 0.00 2.03
400 5 35 10 0.00 0.43 800 10 86 10 0.00 6.98
400 10 44 10 0.00 1.41 800 80 177 10 0.00 417.59
400 40 72 10 0.00 24.23 900 5 118 10 0.00 2.38
400 80 112* 10 0.00 115.61 900 10 131 10 0.00 9.62
400 133 144* 10 0.00 216.38 900 90 209 10 0.00 632.33
Average 9.75 0.01 130.68
*Optimal by Table 2.
w
Number of times best known solution (BK) found.
z
Percent of average solution below the best known solution.

more iterations because it found better solutions. Variant #2
required about the same run time for 300 replications. In
conclusion, Variant #2 clearly outperformed the other
ascent algorithms. Variant #1 improves the performance of
the ascent algorithm.
In Table 4 we report the results for the simulated
annealing, tabu search and the genetic algorithm.
The simulated annealing algorithm failed to find the best
known solution for six problems while tabu search found it
for all 40 problems. The genetic algorithm failed to find it
for two problems (for problem n ¼ 400, p ¼ 80 it found a
solution of 111 10 times, and for problem n ¼ 700, p ¼ 140
it found a solution of 224 six times and 223 four times).
The average result of simulated annealing was, on the
average, 0.26% below the best known solution while the
average result of tabu search was 0.09% below the best
known solution and for the genetic algorithm it was only
0.06% below the best known solution. The simulated
annealing algorithm found the best known solution in
83.8% of the runs while tabu search found it in 90% of the
runs and the genetic algorithm found it in 92.8% of the
runs. The simulated annealing algorithm found the best
known solution in all 10 runs for 33 of the 40 problems.
The tabu search found it in all 10 runs for 32 of the 40
problems while the genetic algorithm found it for 36 of
the 40 problems. Run time was about 45 min per problem
for simulated annealing, 119 min for tabu search and
98 min for the genetic algorithm. In conclusion, tabu search
and the genetic algorithm performed better than simulated
annealing. Except for the two problems for which the
genetic algorithm failed to find the best known solution
while the tabu search did, the genetic algorithm performed
the best.
Since the improved genetic algorithm takes longer than
the other algorithms, we report its results separately in
Table 5. By the run times reported in Table 5, each evolu-
tionary process takes, on the average, 1.3 min per
population for a total of about 13 min for all 10 runs.
The improved genetic algorithm found the best known
solution for all 40 problems. For 37 problems it found it in
all runs. It found the best known solution 97.5% of the
time and in the 10 instances out of 400 that it failed to find
the best known solution, it found a solution with only
one fewer node covered. The average solution was only
0.01% below the best known solution. Run time was about
131 min, which is somewhat longer than the other tech-
niques. In conclusion, the improved genetic algorithm is
clearly the best one and the extra run time required by it is
definitely worth it.
5. Conclusions and future research
The discrete cooperative covering problem was analysed
and solved. The problem is based on a new definition of
coverage. Each facility is sending a signal that decays over
distance. A node is considered covered if the total signal
received by the node exceeds a certain threshold. Three
cover-type problems were defined and formulated as linear
2012 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 62, No. 11
IPs. We showed, through computational experiments, that
the differences between the cooperative and individual
(traditional) cover solutions is substantial, indicating the
importance of using the cooperative cover approach for the
applications where it is appropriate.
We proposed and tested seven heuristic approaches: an
ascent approach, two improvements on the ascent app-
roach, simulated annealing, tabu search, a genetic algo-
rithm and an improved genetic algorithm . All algorithms
were tested on 40 test problems ranging between 100 and
900 nodes and between 5 and 200 facilities. For the maxi-
mal covering problem an integer programming formula-
tion was solved by CPLEX. Experiments with Lagrangian
relaxation failed to provide a good bound for a branch and
bound algorithm. The improved genetic algorithm provi-
ded the best results. Variant #2 of the improved ascent
algorithm was also effective and provided good results
compared with the other ascent algorithms.
The obnoxious version of the problem is of interest. The
objective is changed from a maximal cover objective to
a minimal cover one. The continuous version of the pro-
blem, where the facilities can be located anywhere on the
network and not necessarily on nodes, is a very challenging
problem and deserves attention.
Acknowledgements —This research was supported, in part, by the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Received December 2009;
accepted September 2010 after one revision