Feasible Coalition Sequences

We introduce the idea of a finite sequence of coalition formation games over a set of agents, and we call it Sequential CharacteristicFunction Game (SCFG). We define the solution of such a game as a corresponding sequence of coalition structures that must be related by a given feasibility relation, so no coalition structure can be evaluated in isolation. A sequence satisfying this condition is called Feasible Coalition-Structure Sequence (FCSS). Such games can be a useful abstraction for modelling various scenarios, in particular those for real-world disaster management that we consider in this paper. We give an algorithm for computing an FCSS and evaluate it experimentally. Our results show that an SCFG can represent various classical variations of characteristic-function games, and our algorithm solves instances with a reasonable number of agents.

[1]  Eduardo Bezerra,et al.  Discovering top-k non-redundant clusterings in attributed graphs , 2016, Neurocomputing.

[2]  N. Caroline.  Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Coordination , 1992 .

[3]  Peter Thanisch,et al.  Logical Multidimensional Database Design for Ragged and Unbalanced Aggregation , 2001, DMDW.

[4]  Edith Elkind,et al.  Overlapping coalition formation games: charting the tractability frontier , 2012, AAMAS 2012.

[5]  Alessio Ferone,et al.  Decoy Meta–Clustering Through Rough Graded Possibilistic C-Medoids , 2020, 2020 IEEE Conference on Evolving and Adaptive Intelligent Systems (EAIS).

[6]  Carmine Ventre,et al.  Combinatorial auctions with verification are tractable , 2010, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[7]  Tabajara Krausburg,et al.  Hierarchical Coalition Formation in Multi-agent Systems , 2020, DCAI.

[8]  Piotr Faliszewski,et al.  Constrained Coalition Formation , 2011, AAAI.

[9]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Coalition structure generation: A survey , 2015, Artif. Intell..

[10]  Michal Feldman,et al.  Combinatorial Auctions via Posted Prices , 2014, SODA.

[11]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Coalitional Games via Network Flows , 2013, IJCAI.

[12]  Gianluigi Greco,et al.  Constrained coalition formation on valuation structures: Formal framework, applications, and islands of tractability , 2017, Artif. Intell..

[13]  Edith Elkind,et al.  Cooperative Games with Overlapping Coalitions: Charting the Tractability Frontier , 2014, Artif. Intell..

[14]  Sarvapali D. Ramchurn,et al.  A hierarchical clustering approach to large-scale near-optimal coalition formation with quality guarantees , 2017, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[15]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  A hybrid exact algorithm for complete set partitioning , 2016, Artif. Intell..

[16]  Sarvapali D. Ramchurn,et al.  A cooperative game-theoretic approach to the social ridesharing problem , 2017, Artif. Intell..