Structure and Phase Transition Phenomena in the VTC Problem

We present a formalization of the Virtual Transportation Company (VTC) problem and study its structure and computational complexity, focusing on the job allocation component. We propose two different notions of fairness for job allocation. The problem domain has a rich underlying structure with complexity properties ranging from polynomially solvable cases to cases for which finding even approximate solutions is hard. We also give empirical results that show the existence of phase transition phenomena in the domain and suggest ways for managing the computational complexity of the allocation task in practical settings.