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Abstract We consider the problem of covering multiple submodular constraints. Given a finite ground setN, a weight function$$w: N \rightarrow \mathbb {R}_+$$ $w:N\to R_{+}$,rmonotone submodular functions$$f_1,f_2,\ldots ,f_r$$ $f_1,f_2,\dots ,f_r$overNand requirements$$k_1,k_2,\ldots ,k_r$$ $k_1,k_2,\dots ,k_r$the goal is to find a minimum weight subset$$S \subseteq N$$ $S\subseteq N$such that$$f_i(S) \ge k_i$$ $f_i\left(S\right)\ge k_i$for$$1 \le i \le r$$ $1\le i\le r$. We refer to this problem asMulti-Submod-Coverand it was recently considered by Har-Peled and Jones (Few cuts meet many point sets. CoRR.arxiv:abs1808.03260Har-Peled and Jones 2018) who were motivated by an application in geometry. Even with$$r=1$$ $r=1$Multi-Submod-Covergeneralizes the well-known Submodular Set Cover problem (Submod-SC), and it can also be easily reduced toSubmod-SC. A simple greedy algorithm gives an$$O(\log (kr))$$ $O(log(kr\left)\right)$approximation where$$k = \sum _i k_i$$ $k={\sum }_i{k}_i$and this ratio cannot be improved in the general case. In this paper, motivated by several concrete applications, we consider two ways to improve upon the approximation given by the greedy algorithm. First, we give a bicriteria approximation algorithm forMulti-Submod-Coverthat covers each constraint to within a factor of$$(1-1/e-\varepsilon )$$ $(1-1/e-\epsilon )$while incurring an approximation of$$O(\frac{1}{\epsilon }\log r)$$ $O(\frac{1}{ϵ}logr)$in the cost. Second, we consider the special case when each$$f_i$$ $f_i$is a obtained from a truncated coverage function and obtain an algorithm that generalizes previous work on partial set cover (Partial-SC), covering integer programs (CIPs) and multiple vertex cover constraints Bera et al. (Theoret Comput Sci 555:2–8 Bera et al. 2014). Both these algorithms are based on mathematical programming relaxations that avoid the limitations of the greedy algorithm. We demonstrate the implications of our algorithms and related ideas to several applications ranging from geometric covering problems to clustering with outliers. Our work highlights the utility of the high-level model and the lens of submodularity in addressing this class of covering problems. 

We consider two-cost network design models in which edges of the input graph have an associated cost and length. We build upon recent advances in hop-constrained oblivious routing to obtain two sets of results. We address multicommodity buy-at-bulk network design in the nonuniform setting. Existing poly-logarithmic approximations are based on the junction tree approach [Chekuri et al., 2010; Guy Kortsarz and Zeev Nutov, 2011]. We obtain a new polylogarithmic approximation via a natural LP relaxation. This establishes an upper bound on its integrality gap and affirmatively answers an open question raised in [Chekuri et al., 2010]. The rounding is based on recent results in hop-constrained oblivious routing [Ghaffari et al., 2021], and this technique yields a polylogarithmic approximation in more general settings such as set connectivity. Our algorithm for buy-at-bulk network design is based on an LP-based reduction to h-hop constrained network design for which we obtain LP-based bicriteria approximation algorithms. We also consider a fault-tolerant version of h-hop constrained network design where one wants to design a low-cost network to guarantee short paths between a given set of source-sink pairs even when k-1 edges can fail. This model has been considered in network design [Luis Gouveia and Markus Leitner, 2017; Gouveia et al., 2018; Arslan et al., 2020] but no approximation algorithms were known. We obtain polylogarithmic bicriteria approximation algorithms for the single-source setting for any fixed k. We build upon the single-source algorithm and the junction-tree approach to obtain an approximation algorithm for the multicommodity setting when at most one edge can fail.