Glider Routing and Trajectory Optimisation in Disaster Assessment

In this paper, we introduce the Glider Routing and Trajectory Optimisation Problem (GRTOP), the problem of finding simultaneously optimal routes and trajectories for a fleet of gliders with the aim of surveying a set of locations. We propose a novel Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) formulation for the GRTOP, which simultaneously optimises the routes as well … Read more

Algorithmic Results for Potential-Based Flows: Easy and Hard Cases

Potential-based flows are an extension of classical network flows in which the flow on an arc is determined by the difference of the potentials of its incident nodes. Such flows are unique and arise, for example, in energy networks. Two important algorithmic problems are to determine whether there exists a feasible flow and to maximize … Read more

Clustering and Multifacility Location with Constraints via Distance Function Penalty Method and DC Programming

This paper is a continuation of our effort in using mathematical optimization involving DC programming in clustering and multifacility location. We study a penalty method based on distance functions and apply it particularly to a number of problems in clustering and multifacility location in which the centers to be found must lie in some given … Read more

Finding a best approximation pair of points for two polyhedra

Given two disjoint convex polyhedra, we look for a best approximation pair relative to them, i.e., a pair of points, one in each polyhedron, attaining the minimum distance between the sets. Cheney and Goldstein showed that alternating projections onto the two sets, starting from an arbitrary point, generate a sequence whose two interlaced subsequences converge … Read more

Robust Combinatorial Optimization under Budgeted-Ellipsoidal Uncertainty

In the field of robust optimization uncertain data is modeled by uncertainty sets, i.e. sets which contain all relevant outcomes of the uncertain parameters. The complexity of the related robust problem depends strongly on the shape of the uncertainty set. Two popular classes of uncertainty are budgeted uncertainty and ellipsoidal uncertainty. In this paper we … Read more

Gradient Descent using Duality Structures

Gradient descent is commonly used to solve optimization problems arising in machine learning, such as training neural networks. Although it seems to be effective for many different neural network training problems, it is unclear if the effectiveness of gradient descent can be explained using existing performance guarantees for the algorithm. We argue that existing analyses … Read more

Implementing the ADMM to Big Datasets: A Case Study of LASSO

The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has been popularly used for a wide range of applications in the literature. When big datasets with high-dimensional variables are considered, subproblems arising from the ADMM must be solved inexactly even though theoretically they may have closed-form solutions. Such a scenario immediately poses mathematical ambiguities such as how … Read more