On the Firefighter Problem

Gary MacGillivray1, Ping Wang2
1Department of Mathematics and Statistics University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
2Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

We consider the firefighter problem. We begin by proving that the associated decision problem is NP-complete even when restricted to bipartite graphs. We then investigate algorithms and bounds for trees and square grids.