A two-objective optimization of ship itineraries for a cruise company

This paper deals with the problem of cruise itinerary planning which plays a central role in worldwide cruise ship tourism. In particular, the Day-by-day Cruise Itinerary Optimization (DCIO) problem is considered. Assuming that a cruise has been planned in terms of homeports and journey duration, the DCIO problem consist in determining the daily schedule of … Read more

Interpretable Policies and the Price of Interpretability in Hypertension Treatment Planning

Problem definition: Effective hypertension management is critical to reducing consequences of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, a leading cause of death in the United States. Clinical guidelines for hypertension can be enhanced using decision-analytic approaches, capable of capturing many complexities in treatment planning. However, model-generated recommendations may be uninterpretable/unintuitive, limiting their acceptability in practice. We address this … Read more

QCQP with Extra Constant Modulus Constraints: Theory and Applications on QoS Constrained Hybrid Beamforming for mmWave MU-MIMO

The constant modulus constraint is widely used in analog beamforming, hybrid beamforming, intelligent reflecting surface design, and radar waveform design. The quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) problem is also widely used in signal processing. However, the QCQP with extra constant modulus constraints was not systematically studied in mathematic programming and signal processing. For example, the … Read more

Linear Control Policies for Online Vehicle Relocation in Shared Mobility Systems

In one-way station-based shared mobility systems, where system users share vehicles for making trips between vehicle stations, the accumulation of one-way trips inevitably causes vehicle imbalances between stations. To correct these imbalances, we focus on the effective use of linear control policies for calculating online vehicle relocations from a history of user trips. Our scenario-based … Read more

Increasing Driver Flexibility through Personalized Menus and Incentives in Ridesharing and Crowdsourced Delivery Platforms

Allowing drivers to choose which requests to fulfill provides drivers with much-needed autonomy in ridesharing and crowdsourced delivery platforms. While stochastic, a driver’s acceptance of requests in their menu is influenced by the platform’s offered compensation. Therefore, in this work, we create and solve an optimization model to determine personalized menus and incentives to offer … Read more

Multi-criteria Course Mode Selection and Classroom Assignment Under Sudden Space Scarcity

Problem Definition: While physical (or ‘social’) distancing is an important public health intervention during airborne pandemics, physical distancing dramatically reduces the effective capacity of classrooms. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this presented a unique problem to campus planners who hoped to deliver a meaningful amount of in-person instruction in a way that respected physical distancing. This … Read more

Decision Intelligence for Nationwide Ventilator Allocation

Many states in the U.S. have faced shortages of medical resources because of the surge in the number of patients suffering from COVID-19. As many projections indicate, the situation will be far worse in coming months. The upcoming challenge is not only due to the exponential growth in cases but also because of inherent uncertainty … Read more

Global Optimization for Nonconvex Programs via Convex Proximal Point Method

The nonconvex program plays an important role in the field of optimization and has a lot of applications in practice. However, for general nonconvex programming problems, the lack of verifiable global optimal conditions and the multiple local minimizers make global optimization hard in computation. In this paper, a convex proximal point algorithm (CPPA) is considered … Read more

A novel decomposition approach for holistic airline optimization

Airlines face many different planning processes until the day of operation. These include Fleet Assignment, Tail Assignment and the associated control of ground processes between consecutive flights, called Turnaround Handling. All of these planning problems have in common that they often need to be reoptimized on the day of execution due to unplanned events. In … Read more

Locating Platforms and Scheduling a Fleet of Drones for Emergency Delivery of Perishable Items

Motivated by issues dealing with delivery of emergency medical products during humanitarian disasters, this paper addresses the general problem of delivering perishable items to remote demands accessible only by helicopters or drones. Each drone operates out of platforms that may be moved when not in use and each drone has a limited delivery range to … Read more