GRASP and path relinking for the equitable dispersion problem

The equitable dispersion problem consists in selecting a subset of elements from a given set in such a way that a measure of dispersion is maximized. In particular, we target the Max-Mean dispersion model in which the average distance between the selected elements is maximized. We first review previous methods and mathematical formulations for this and related dispersion problems and then propose a GRASP with a Path Relinking in which the local search is based on the Variable Neighborhood methodology. Our method is specially suited for instances in which the distances represent affinity and are not restricted to take non-negative values. The computational experience with 120 instances shows the merit of the proposed procedures compared to previous methods.