Work Partitioning on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulation
Work partitioning is a key challenge with ap- plications in many scientific and technological fields. The problem is very well studied with a rich literature on both distributed and parallel computing architectures. In this paper we deal with the work partitioning problem for parallel and distributed agent-based simulations which aims at (i) balancing the overall load distribution, (ii) minimizing, at the same time, the communication overhead due to agents' inter-dependencies. We introduce a classification taxonomy of work partitioning strategies and present a space-based work partitioning ap- proach, based on a Quad-tree data structure, which enables to: identify a good space partitioning …
Social Influence Maximization in Hypergraphs
This work deals with a generalization of the minimum Target Set Selection (TSS) problem, a key algorithmic question in information diffusion research due to its potential commercial value. Firstly proposed by Kempe et al., the TSS problem is based on a linear threshold diffusion model defined on an input graph with node thresholds, quantifying the hardness to influence each node. The goal is to find the smaller set of items that can influence the whole network according to the diffusion model defined. This study generalizes the TSS problem on networks characterized by many-to-many relationships modeled via hypergraphs. Specifically, we introduce a linear threshold diffusion process on such …
Whom to befriend to influence people
Alice wants to join a new social network, and influence its members to adopt a new product or idea. Each person $v$ in the network has a certain threshold $t(v)$ for {\em activation}, i.e adoption of the product or idea. If $v$ has at least $t(v)$ activated neighbors, then $v$ will also become activated. If Alice wants to activate the entire social network, whom should she befriend? More generally, we study the problem of finding the minimum number of links that a set of external influencers should form to people in the network, in order to activate the entire social network. This {\em Minimum Links} Problem has applications in viral marketing and the study of epidemics. Its solution can be…