The Complexity Classes of Hamming Distance Recoverable Robust Problems

In the well-known complexity class NP, many combinatorial problems can be found, whose optimization counterpart are important for many practical settings. Those problems usually consider full knowledge about the input and optimize on this specific input. In a practical setting, however, uncertainty in the input data is a usual phenomenon, whereby this is normally not covered in optimization versions of NP problems. One concept to model the uncertainty in the input data, is \textit{recoverable robustness}. In this setting, a solution on the input is calculated, whereby a possible recovery to a good solution should be guaranteed, whenever uncertainty manifests itself. That is, a solution $\texttt{s}_0$ for the base scenario $\textsf{S}_0$ as well as a solution \texttt{s} for every possible scenario of scenario set \textsf{S} has to be calculated. In other words, not only solution $\texttt{s}_0$ for instance $\textsf{S}_0$ is calculated but solutions \texttt{s} for all scenarios from \textsf{S} are prepared to correct possible errors through uncertainty. This paper introduces a specific concept of recoverable robust problems: Hamming Distance Recoverable Robust Problems. In this setting, solutions $\texttt{s}_0$ and \texttt{s} have to be calculated, such that $\texttt{s}_0$ and \texttt{s} may only differ in at most $\kappa$ elements. That is, one can recover from a harmful scenario by choosing a different solution, which is not too far away from the first solution. This paper surveys the complexity of Hamming distance recoverable robust version of optimization problems, typically found in NP for different types of scenarios. The complexity is primarily situated in the lower levels of the polynomial hierarchy. The main contribution of the paper is that recoverable robust problems with compression-encoded scenarios and $m \in \mathbb{N}$ recoveries are $\Sigma^P_{2m+1}$-complete.