A systematic technique to bound factor-revealing linear programs is presented. We show how to derive a family of upper bound factor-revealing programs (UPFRP), and show that each such program can be solved by a computer to bound the approximation factor of an associated algorithm. Obtaining an UPFRP is straightforward, and can be used as an alternative to analytical proofs, that are usually very long and tedious. We apply this technique to the Metric Facility Location Problem (MFLP) and to a generalization where the distance function is a squared metric. We call this generalization the Squared Metric Facility Location Problem (SMFLP) and prove that there is no approximation factor better than 2.04, assuming P = NP. Then, we analyze the best known algorithms for the MFLP based on primal-dual and LP-rounding techniques when they are applied to the SMFLP. We prove very tight bounds for these algorithms, and show that the LP-rounding algorithm achieves a ratio of 2.04, and therefore has the best factor for the SMFLP. We use UPFRPs in the dual-fitting analysis of the primal-dual algorithms for both the SMFLP and the MFLP, improving some of the previous analysis for the MFLP.

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In the k-center problem, given a metric space V and a positive integer k, one wants to select k elements (centers) of V and an assignment from V to centers, minimizing the maximum distance between an element of V and its assigned center. One of the most general variants is the capacitated α-faulttolerant k-center, where centers have a limit on the number of assigned elements, and, if α centers fail, there is a reassignment from V to non-faulty centers. In this paper, we present a new approach to tackle fault tolerance, by selecting and pre-opening a set of backup centers, then solving the obtained residual instance. For the {0, L}-capacitated case, we give approximations with factor 6 for the basic problem, and 7 for the so called conservative variant, when only clients whose centers failed may be reassigned. Our algorithms improve on the previously best known factors of 9 and 17, respectively. Moreover, we consider the case with general capacities. Assuming α is constant, our method leads to the first approximations for this case. We also derive approximations for the capacitated fault-tolerant k-supplier problem.

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