Title: Generalized firefighting on the 2 dimensional infinite grid and centrality measures in social networks
Speaker: Kah Loon Ng, DIMACS
Date: October 31, 2005, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Location: DIMACS Center, CoRE Bldg, Room 431, Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ
Abstract:
It is known that if a fire breaks out at a single source in a 2 dimensional infinite grid, a single firefighter deployed per time step is not sufficient to contain the spread of the fire. However, if two firefighters are available for deployment per time step, the fire can be contained after some finite time t. In the first part of this talk, I will discuss the firefighter problem on the 2 dimensional infinite grid where the number of firefighters available per time step is not constant. This work is done jointly with P. Raff. In the second part of my talk, I will present several centrality measures used by social scientists in the study of social networks. A better understanding of the notion of centrality in a graph might result in better vaccination strategies where the objective is to minimize the spread of the disease in a network.
see: DIMACS Computational and Mathematical Epidemiology Seminar Series 2005 - 2006