Assignment

October 11, 2016

Consider a network consisting of m nodes and n arcs. Each arc is associated with a unidirectional
ow. In addition, there exists an adjacency matrix, which contains the information about which
node is adjacent to which other node in the network.1
A self-sucient region is dened as a set of adjacent nodes such that the total ow in and out
of this set is less than a certain threshold.
Alternate specification
Consider the set of m nodes and adjacency matrix as describe above. Instead of the n arcs with
associated ows, you know the available supply and demand for a good at each node.
A self-sucient region is dened as a set of adjacent nodes such that the total demand across
all nodes in the set does not exceed the total supply supply across all nodes in the set by more
than a certain threshold.
Using either of the above specications,
Formulate an optimization program to determine the largest number of self-sucient
regions that the m nodes can be divided into; i.e., the largest number of mutually exclusive
and collectively exhaustive subsets of adjacent nodes such that each subset is a selfsucient region.
Construct and solve numerical instances of the problem with varying sizes and values for
the underlying parameters.
Present your numerical results and use them to draw qualitative insights.

Note that adjacent nodes might or might not have an arc connecting them.