Weintroduce a new method for finding several types of optimal k-point sets, minimizing perimeter, diameter, circumradius, and related measures, by testing sets of the O(k) nearest neighbors to each point. We argue that this is better in a number of ways than previous algorithms, whichwere based on high order Voronoi diagrams. Our technique allows us for the first time to efficiently maintain minimal sets as new points are inserted, to generalize our algorithms to higher dimensions, to find minimal convex k-vertex polygons and polytopes, and to improvemany previous results. Weachievemany of our results via a new algorithm for finding rectilinear nearest neighbors in the plane in time O(n log n+kn). We also demonstrate a related technique for finding minimum area k-point sets in the plane, based on testing sets of nearest vertical neighbors to each line segment determined by a pair of points. A generalization of this technique also allows us to find minimum volume and boundary measure sets in arbitrary dimensions.

We perform linear programming optimizations on the intersection of k polyhedra in R³, represented by their outer recursive decompositions, in expected time O(k log k log n + √k log k log³ n). We use this result to derive efficient algorithms for dynamic linear programming problems in which constraints are inserted and deleted, and queries must optimize specified objective functions. As an application, we describe an improved solution to the planar 2-center and 2-median problems.

We describe an efficient algorithm for maintaining a minimum spanning tree (MST) in a graph subject to a sequence of edge weight modifications. The sequence of minimum spanning trees is computed offline, after the sequence of modifications is known. The algorithm performs O(log n) work per modification, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. We use our techniques to solve the offline geometric MST problem for a planar point set subject to insertions and deletions; our algorithm for this problem performs O(log 2 n) work per modification. No previous dynamic geometric MST algorithm was known.