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 highcapacity 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.