Minimizing Risk Exposure when the Choice of a Risk Measure is Ambiguous

Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, there has been a renewed interest toward quantifying more appropriately the risks involved in financial positions. Popular risk measures such as variance and value-at-risk have been found inadequate as we now give more importance to properties such as monotonicity, convexity, translation invariance, scale invariance, and law invariance. Unfortunately, the … Read more

Regret Analysis of Block Coordinate Gradient Methods for Online Convex Programming

In this paper, we propose two block coordinate gradient (BCG) methods for the online convex programming: the BCG method with the cyclic rule and the BCG method with the random rule. The proposed methods solve a low dimensional problem at each iteration, and hence they are efficient for large scale problems. For the proposed methods, … Read more

New Semidefinite Programming Relaxations for the Linear Ordering and the Traveling Salesman Problem

In 2004 Newman suggested a semidefinite programming relaxation for the Linear Ordering Problem (LOP) that is related to the semidefinite program used in the Goemans-Williamson algorithm to approximate the Max Cut problem. Her model is based on the observation that linear orderings can be fully described by a series of cuts. Newman shows that her … Read more

Robust Inventory Routing with Flexible Time Window Allocation

This paper studies a robust maritime inventory routing problem with time windows and stochastic travel times. One of the novelties of the problem is that the length and placement of the time windows are also decision variables. Such problems arise in the design and negotiation of long-term delivery contracts with customers who require on-time deliveries … Read more

The impact of wind uncertainty on the strategic valuation of distributed electricity storage

The intermittent nature of wind energy generation has introduced a new degree of uncertainty to the tactical planning of energy systems. Short-term energy balancing decisions are no longer (fully) known, and it is this lack of knowledge that causes the need for strategic thinking. But despite this observation, strategic models are rarely set in an … Read more

A Semidefinite Opimization Approach to the Target Visitation Problem

We propose an exact algorithm for the Target Visitation Problem (TVP). The (TVP) is a composition of the Linear Ordering Problem and the Traveling Salesman Problem. It has several military and non-military applications, where two important, often competing factors are the overall distance traveled (e.g. by an unmanned aerial vehicle) and the visiting sequence of … Read more

New Lower Bounds for Semi-online Scheduling on Two Uniform Machines with Known Optimum

This problem is about to schedule a number of jobs of different lengths on two uniform machines with given speeds 1 and s ≥ 1, so that the overall finishing time, i.e. the makespan, is earliest possible. We consider a semi- online variant introduced (for equal speeds) by Azar and Regev, where the jobs are … Read more

The Continuous Time Service Network Design Problem

Consolidation carriers transport shipments that are small relative to trailer capacity. To be cost-effective, the carrier must consolidate shipments, which requires coordinating their paths in both space and time, i.e., the carrier must solve a Service Network Design problem. Most service network design models rely on discretization of time, i.e., instead of determining the exact … Read more

Information Gap Decision Theory Based OPF With HVDC Connected Wind Farms

A method for solving the optimal power flow (OPF) problem including HVDC connected offshore wind farms is presented in this paper. Different factors have been considered in the proposed method, namely, voltage source converter (VSC-HVDC) and line-commutated converter high-voltage DC (LCC-HVDC) link constraints, doubly fed induction generators’ (DFIGs) capability curve as well as the uncertainties … Read more

Stochastic Real-Time Scheduling of Wind-thermal Generation Units in an Electric Utility

The objective of dynamic economic dispatch (DED) problem is to find the optimal dispatch of generation units in a given operation horizon to supply a pre-specified demand, while satisfying a set of constraints. In this paper, an efficient method based on Optimality Condition Decomposition (OCD) technique is proposed to solve the DED problem in real-time … Read more