In the Submodular Welfare Problem, m items are to be distributed among n players with utility functions wi: 2 [m] → R+. The utility functions are assumed to be monotone and submodular. Assuming that player i receives a set of items Si, we wish to maximize the total utility Pn i=1 wi(Si). In this paper, we work in the value oracle model where the only access to the utility functions is through a black box returning wi(S) for a given set S. Submodular Welfare is in fact a special case of the more general problem of submodular maximization subject to a matroid constraint: max{f(S) : S ∈ I}, where f is monotone submodular and I is the collection of independent sets in some matroid. For both problems, a greedy algorithm is known to yield a 1/2-approximation [21, 16]. In special cases where the matroid is uniform (I = {S: |S | ≤ k}) [20] or the submodular function is of a special type [4, 2], a (1 − 1/e)approximation has been achieved and this is optimal for these problems in the value oracle model [22, 6, 15]. A (1 − 1/e)-approximation for the general Submodular Welfare Problem has been known only in a stronger demand oracle model [4], where in fact 1 − 1/e can be improved [9]. In this paper, we develop a randomized continuous greedy algorithm which achieves a (1 − 1/e)-approximation for the Submodular Welfare Problem in the value oracle model. We also show that the special case of n equal players is approximation resistant, in the sense that the optimal (1 − 1/e)approximation is achieved by a uniformly random solution. Using the pipage rounding technique [1, 2], we obtain a (1 − 1/e)-approximation for submodular maximization subject to any matroid constraint. The continuous greedy algorithm has a potential of wider applicability, which we demonstrate on the examples of the Generalized Assignment Problem and the AdWords Assignment Problem.

Many problems in artificial intelligence require adaptively making a sequence of decisions with uncertain outcomes under partial observability. Solving such stochastic optimization problems is a fundamental but notoriously difficult challenge. In this paper, we introduce the concept of adaptive submodularity, generalizing submodular set functions to adaptive policies. We prove that if a problem satisfies this property, a simple adaptive greedy algorithm is guaranteed to be competitive with the optimal policy. In addition to providing performance guarantees for both stochastic maximization and coverage, adaptive submodularity can be exploited to drastically speed up the greedy algorithm by using lazy evaluations. We illustrate the usefulness of the concept by giving several examples of adaptive submodular objectives arising in diverse AI applications including management of sensing resources, viral marketing and active learning. Proving adaptive submodularity for these problems allows us to recover existing results in these applications as special cases, improve approximation guarantees and handle natural generalizations. 1.

Let f: 2 X → R+ be a monotone submodular set function, and let (X, I) be a matroid. We consider the problem maxS∈I f(S). It is known that the greedy algorithm yields a 1/2 approximation [14] for this problem. For certain special cases, e.g. max |S|≤k f(S), the greedy algorithm yields a (1 − 1/e)-approximation. It is known that this is optimal both in the value oracle model (where the only access to f is through a black box returning f(S) for a given set S) [28], and also for explicitly posed instances assuming P � = NP [10]. In this paper, we provide a randomized (1 − 1/e)-approximation for any monotone submodular function and an arbitrary matroid. The algorithm works in the value oracle model. Our main tools are a variant of the pipage rounding technique of Ageev and Sviridenko [1], and a continuous greedy process that might be of independent interest. As a special case, our algorithm implies an optimal approximation for the Submodular Welfare Problem in the value oracle model [32]. As a second application, we show that the Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) is also a special case; although the reduction requires |X | to be exponential in the original problem size, we are able to achieve a (1 − 1/e − o(1))approximation for GAP, simplifying previously known algorithms. Additionally, the reduction enables us to obtain approximation algorithms for variants of GAP with more general constraints.

The need for efficient monitoring of spatio-temporal dynamics in large environmental applications, such as the water quality monitoring in rivers and lakes, motivates the use of robotic sensors in order to achieve sufficient spatial coverage. Typically, these robots have bounded resources, such as limited battery or limited amounts of time to obtain measurements. Thus, careful coordination of their paths is required in order to maximize the amount of information collected, while respecting the resource constraints. In this paper, we present an efficient approach for near-optimally solving the NP-hard optimization problem of planning such informative paths. In particular, we first develop eSIP (efficient Single-robot Informative Path planning), an approximation algorithm for optimizing the path of a single robot. Hereby, we use a Gaussian Process to model the underlying phenomenon, and use the mutual information between the visited locations and remainder of the space to quantify the amount of information collected. We prove that the mutual information collected using paths obtained by using eSIP is close to the information obtained by an optimal solution. We then provide a general technique, sequential allocation, which can be used to extend any single robot planning algorithm, such as eSIP, for the multi-robot problem. This procedure approximately generalizes any guarantees for the single-robot problem to the multi-robot case. We extensively evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on several experiments performed in-field for two important environmental sensing applications, lake and river monitoring, and simulation experiments performed using several real world sensor network data sets. 1.

Solving stochastic optimization problems under partial observability, where one needs to adaptively make decisions with uncertain outcomes, is a fundamental but notoriously difficult challenge. In this paper, we introduce the concept of adaptive submodularity, generalizing submodular set functions to adaptive policies. We prove that if a problem satisfies this property, a simple adaptive greedy algorithm is guaranteed to be competitive with the optimal policy. We illustrate the usefulness of the concept by giving several examples of adaptive submodular objectives arising in diverse applications including sensor placement, viral marketing and pool-based active learning. Proving adaptive submodularity for these problems allows us to recover existing results in these applications as special cases and leads to natural generalizations. 1

We introduce revenue submodularity, the property that market expansion has diminishing returns on an auction’s expected revenue. We prove that revenue submodularity is generally possible only in matroid markets, that Bayesian-optimal auctions are always revenue-submodular in such markets, and that the VCG mechanism is revenue-submodular in matroid markets with i.i.d. bidders and “sufficient competition”. We also give two applications of revenue submodularity: good approximation algorithms for novel market expansion problems, and approximate revenue guarantees for the VCG mechanism with i.i.d. bidders.

Submodularity is a property of set functions with deep theoretical consequences and far–reaching applications. At first glance it appears very similar to concavity, in other ways it resembles convexity. It appears in a wide variety of applications: in Computer Science it has recently been identified and utilized in domains such as viral marketing (Kempe et al., 2003), information gathering (Krause and Guestrin, 2007), image segmentation (Boykov and

Abstract—Telecommunications networks, and in particular optical WDM networks, are vulnerable to large-scale failures of their physical infrastructure, resulting from physical attacks (such as an Electromagnetic Pulse attack) or natural disasters (such as solar flares, earthquakes, and floods). Such events happen at specific geographical locations and disrupt specific parts of the network but their effects are not deterministic. Therefore, we provide a unified framework to model the network vulnerability when the event has a probabilistic nature, defined by an arbitrary probability density function. Our framework captures scenarios with a number of simultaneous attacks, in which network components consist of several dependent subcomponents, and in which either a 1+1 or a 1:1 protection plan is in place. We use computational geometric tools to provide efficient algorithms to identify vulnerable points within the network under various metrics. Then, we obtain numerical results for specific backbone networks, thereby demonstrating the applicability of our algorithms to real-world scenarios. Our novel approach allows for identifying locations which require additional protection efforts (e.g., equipment shielding). Overall, the paper demonstrates that using computational geometric techniques can significantly contribute to our understanding of network resilience. Index Terms—Network survivability, geographic networks, network protection, computational geometry, optical networks. I.

Consider the problem of protecting endangered species by selecting patches of land to be used for conservation purposes. Typically, the availability of patches changes over time, and recommendations must be made dynamically. This is a chal-lenging prototypical example of a sequential optimization problem under uncertainty in computational sustainability. Ex-isting techniques do not scale to problems of realistic size. In this paper, we develop an efficient algorithm for adaptively making recommendations for dynamic conservation planning, and prove that it obtains near-optimal performance. We further evaluate our approach on a detailed reserve design case study of conservation planning for three rare species in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. 1

We present an optimal, combinatorial 1-1/e approximation algorithm for monotone submodular optimization over a matroid constraint. Compared to the continuous greedy algorithm (Calinescu, Chekuri, Pal and Vondrak, 2008), our algorithm is extremely simple and requires no rounding. It consists of the greedy algorithm followed by local search. Both phases are run not on the actual objective function, but on a related non-oblivious potential function, which is also monotone submodular. In our previous work on maximum coverage (Filmus and Ward, 2011), the potential function gives more weight to elements covered multiple times. We generalize this approach from coverage functions to arbitrary monotone submodular functions. When the objective function is a coverage function, both definitions of the potential function coincide. The parameters used to define the potential function are closely related to Pade approximants of exp(x) evaluated at x = 1. We use this connection to determine the approximation ratio of the algorithm.