We present dynamic flow algorithms to solve the k-sink problem whose aim is to locate k sinks (evacuation centers) in such a way that the evacuation time of the last evacuee is minimized. In the confluent model, the evacuees originating from or passing through a vertex must evacuate to the same sink, and most known results on the k-sink problem adopt the confluent model. When the edge capacities are uniform (resp. general), our algorithms for non-confluent flow in the path networks run in O(n + k² log² n) (resp. O(n log(n) + k² log⁵ n)) time, where n is the number of vertices. Our algorithms for cycle networks run in O(k²n log² n) (resp. O(k²n log⁵ n)) time, when the edge capacities are uniform (resp. general).

We address the facility location problems on dynamic flow path networks. A dynamic flow path network consists of an undirected path with positive edge lengths, positive edge capacities, and positive vertex weights. A path can be considered as a road, an edge length as the distance along the road and a vertex weight as the number of people at the site. An edge capacity limits the number of people that can enter the edge per unit time. In the dynamic flow network, given particular points on edges or vertices, called sinks, all the people evacuate from the vertices to the sinks as quickly as possible. The problem is to find the location of sinks on a dynamic flow path network in such a way that the aggregate evacuation time (i.e., the sum of evacuation times for all the people) to sinks is minimized. We consider two models of the problem: the confluent flow model and the non-confluent flow model. In the former model, the way of evacuation is restricted so that all the people at a vertex have to evacuate to the same sink, and in the latter model, there is no such restriction. In this paper, for both the models, we develop algorithms which run in almost linear time regardless of the number of sinks. It should be stressed that for the confluent flow model, our algorithm improves upon the previous result by Benkoczi et al. [Theoretical Computer Science, 2020], and one for the non-confluent flow model is the first polynomial time algorithm.

Evacuation in emergency situations can be modeled by a dynamic flow network. Two criteria have been used before: one is the evacuation completion time and the other is the aggregate evacuation time of individual evacuees. The aim of this paper is to optimize the aggregate evacuation time in the simplest case, where the network is a path and only one evacuation center (called a sink) is to be introduced. The evacuees are initially located at the vertices, but their precise numbers are unknown, and are given by upper and lower bounds. Under this assumption, we compute the sink location that minimizes the maximum "regret." We present an $O(n^2\log n)$ time algorithm to solve this problem, improving upon the previously fastest $O(n^3)$ time algorithm, where $n$ is the number of vertices.