A Memory-efficient Bounding Algorithm for the Two-terminal Reliability Problem

The terminal-pair reliability problem, i.e. the problem of determining the probability that there exists at least one path of working edges connecting the terminal nodes, is known to be NP-hard. Thus, bounding algorithms are used to cope with large graph sizes. However, they still have huge demands in terms of memory. We propose a memory-efficient implementation of an extension of the Gobien-Dotson bounding algorithm. Without increasing runtime, compression of relevant data structures allows us to use low-bandwidth high-capacity storage. In this way, available hard disk space becomes the limiting factor. Depending on the input structures, graphs with several hundreds of edges (i.e. system components) can be handled.