IBM ILOG Solver User's Manual > The Basics > Modeling and Solving a Simple Problem: Map Coloring > Describe

Describe

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The problem involves choosing colors for the countries on a map in such a way that at most four colors (blue, white, yellow, green) are used, and no neighboring countries are the same color. In this exercise, you will find a solution for a map coloring problem with six countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Map coloring problems are closely related to graph coloring problems and have many real world applications. For more information, see Chapter 12, Setting Filter Levels: Coloring Graphs.

europe_cropped.gif

Figure 2.1 Map for coloring

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Describe the problem

The first step in modeling and solving a problem is to write a natural language description of the problem, identifying the decision variables and the constraints on these variables.

Write a natural language description of this problem. Answer these questions:

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