  A key problem in emerging complex cyber-physical networks is the design of
information and control topologies, including sensor and actuator selection and
communication network design. These problems can be posed as combinatorial set
function optimization problems to maximize a dynamic performance metric for the
network. Some systems and control metrics feature a property called
submodularity, which allows simple greedy algorithms to obtain provably
near-optimal topology designs. However, many important metrics lack
submodularity and therefore lack provable guarantees for using a greedy
optimization approach. Here we show that performance guarantees can be obtained
for greedy maximization of certain non-submodular functions of the
controllability and observability Gramians. Our results are based on two key
quantities: the submodularity ratio, which quantifies how far a set function is
from being submodular, and the curvature, which quantifies how far a set
function is from being supermodular.
