Fast optimal aggregate point search for a merged set on road networks

Aggregate nearest neighbor query, which returns an optimal target point that minimizes the aggregate distance for a given query point set, is one of the most important operations in spatial databases and their application domains. This paper addresses the problem of finding the aggregate nearest neighbor for a merged set that consists of the given query point set and multiple points needed to be selected from a candidate set, which we name as merged aggregate nearest neighbor(MANN) query. This paper proposes two algorithms to process MANN query on road networks when aggregate function is max. Then, we extend the algorithms to support other aggregate functions (e.g., sum). Extensive experiments are conducted to examine the behaviors of the solutions in terms of five parameters affecting the performance. The overall experiments show that our strategies to minimize the response time are effective.