We give new polynomial lower bounds for a number of dynamic measure problems
in computational geometry. These lower bounds hold in the Word-RAM model,
conditioned on the hardness of either 3SUM, APSP, or the Online Matrix-Vector
Multiplication problem [Henzinger et al., STOC 2015]. In particular we get
lower bounds in the incremental and fully-dynamic settings for counting maximal
or extremal points in R^3, different variants of Klee's Measure Problem,
problems related to finding the largest empty disk in a set of points, and
querying the size of the i'th convex layer in a planar set of points. We also
answer a question of Chan et al. [SODA 2022] by giving a conditional lower
bound for dynamic approximate square set cover. While many conditional lower
bounds for dynamic data structures have been proven since the seminal work of
Patrascu [STOC 2010], few of them relate to computational geometry problems.
This is the first paper focusing on this topic. Most problems we consider can
be solved in O(n log n) time in the static case and their dynamic versions have
only been approached from the perspective of improving known upper bounds. One
exception to this is Klee's measure problem in R^2, for which Chan [CGTA 2010]
gave an unconditional Ω(n) lower bound on the worst-case update
time. By a similar approach, we show that such a lower bound also holds for an
important special case of Klee's measure problem in R^3 known as the
Hypervolume Indicator problem, even for amortized runtime in the incremental
setting.Comment: Improved presentation, improved the reduction for the Hypervolume
Indicator problem and added a reduction for dynamic approximate square set
cove