The Canadian Traveller Problem on outerplanar graphs

We study the PSPACE-complete k-Canadian Traveller Problem, where a weighted graph G=(V,E,ω) with a source s∈ V and a target t∈ V are given. This problem also has a hidden input E_* ⊊ E of cardinality at most k representing blocked edges. The objective is to travel from s to t with the minimum distance. At the beginning of the walk, the blockages E_* are unknown: the traveller discovers that an edge is blocked when visiting one of its endpoints. Online algorithms, also called strategies, have been proposed for this problem and assessed with the competitive ratio, i.e. the ratio between the distance actually traversed by the traveller divided by the distance we would have traversed knowing the blockages in advance. Even though the optimal competitive ratio is 2k+1 even on unit-weighted planar graphs of treewidth 2, we design a polynomial-time strategy achieving competitive ratio 9 on unit-weighted outerplanar graphs. This value 9 also stands as a lower bound for this family of graphs as we prove that, for any ε > 0, no strategy can achieve a competitive ratio 9-ε. Finally, we show that it is not possible to achieve a constant competitive ratio (independent of G and k) on weighted outerplanar graphs.