Policy with guaranteed risk-adjusted performance for multistage stochastic linear problems

Risk-averse multi-stage problems and their applications are gaining interest in various fields of applications. Under convexity assumptions, the resolution of these problems can be done with trajectory following dynamic programming algorithms like Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) to access a deterministic lower bound, and dual SDDP for deterministic upper bounds. In this paper, we leverage … Read more

Duality of upper bounds in stochastic dynamic programming

For multistage stochastic programming problems with stagewise independent uncertainty, dynamic programming algorithms calculate polyhedral approximations for the value functions at each stage.  The SDDP algorithm provides piecewise linear lower bounds, in the spirit of the L-shaped algorithm, and corresponding upper bounds took a longer time to appear.  One strategy uses the primal dynamic programming recursion … Read more

Convergence of Trajectory Following Dynamic Programming algorithms for multistage stochastic problems without finite support assumptions

We introduce a class of algorithms, called Trajectory Following Dynamic Programming (TFDP) algorithms, that iteratively refines approximation of cost-to-go functions of multistage stochastic problems with independent random variables. This framework encompasses most variants of the Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming algorithm. Leveraging a Lipschitz assumption on the expected cost-to-go functions, we provide a new convergence and … Read more

Dual SDDP for risk-averse multistage stochastic programs

Risk-averse multistage stochastic programs appear in multiple areas and are challenging to solve. Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) is a well-known tool to address such problems under time-independence assumptions. We show how to derive a dual formulation for these problems and apply an SDDP algorithm, leading to converging and deterministic upper bounds for risk-averse problems. … Read more

Exact converging bounds for Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming via Fenchel duality

The Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) algorithm has become one of the main tools to address convex multistage stochastic optimal control problem. Recently a large amount of work has been devoted to improve the convergence speed of the algorithm through cut-selection and regularization, or to extend the field of applications to non-linear, integer or risk-averse … Read more

On the convergence of decomposition methods for multi-stage stochastic convex programs

We prove the almost-sure convergence of a class of sampling-based nested decomposition algorithms for multistage stochastic convex programs in which the stage costs are general convex functions of the decisions, and uncertainty is modelled by a scenario tree. As special cases, our results imply the almost-sure convergence of SDDP, CUPPS and DOASA when applied to … Read more