Variable neighborhood search for minimum sum-of-squares clustering on networks

•A new Clustering problem on networks is introduced.•The metaheuristic VNS is shown to be naturally customized for this problem.•Numerical experience reported confirms that results than those reported by k-means are obtained.

Euclidean Minimum Sum-of-Squares Clustering amounts to finding p prototypes by minimizing the sum of the squared Euclidean distances from a set of points to their closest prototype. In recent years related clustering problems have been extensively analyzed under the assumption that the space is a network, and not any more the Euclidean space. This allows one to properly address community detection problems, of significant relevance in diverse phenomena in biological, technological and social systems. However, the problem of minimizing the sum of squared distances on networks have not yet been addressed. Two versions of the problem are possible: either the p prototypes are sought among the set of nodes of the network, or also points along edges are taken into account as possible prototypes. While the first problem is transformed into a classical discrete p-median problem, the latter is new in the literature, and solved in this paper with the Variable Neighborhood Search heuristic. The solutions of the two problems are compared in a series of test examples.