Fully dynamic planarity testing

The fully dynamic planarity testing problem consists of performing an arbitrary sequence of the following three kinds of operations on a planar graph G: (i) insert an edge if the resultant graph remains planar; (ii) delete an edge; and (iii) test whether an edge could be added to the graph without violating planarity. We show how to support each of the above operations in O(n2/3) time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. The bound for tests and deletions is worst-case, while the bound for insertions is amortized. This is the first algorithm for this problem with sub-linear running time. The same data structure has further applications in maintaining the biconnected and triconnected components of a dynamic planar graph.