Fuchs, Nickel and Nöllenburg – METROSAT 2022

Description

This concise, 5-page academic paper, “MetroSAT: Logic-based computation of metro maps,” is authored by Samantha Fuchs, Soeren Nickel, and Martin Nöllenburg from TU Wien’s Algorithms and Complexity Group. It presents a contemporary investigation into the NP-hard challenge of generating high-quality schematic metro maps. The document introduces and evaluates novel logic-based models utilizing MaxSAT and Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) as powerful alternatives to traditional Integer Linear Programming (ILP). Through detailed experimental results, supported by illustrative figures showcasing generated map layouts for cities like Vienna and Karlsruhe, and a comprehensive table of runtime comparisons, the authors demonstrate that these dedicated solver approaches achieve competitive performance, notably outperforming ILP on larger instances. This rigorously structured work offers valuable insights for researchers in computational geometry, graph drawing, and declarative optimization techniques.