A Computationally Efficient Algorithm for Computing Convex Hull Prices

Electricity markets worldwide allow participants to bid non-convex production offers. While non-convex offers can more accurately reflect a resource’s capabilities, they create challenges for market clearing processes. For example, system operators may be required to execute side payments to participants whose costs are not covered through energy sales as determined via traditional locational marginal pricing … Read more

Branch-and-Cut-and-Price for Multi-Agent Pathfinding

There are currently two broad strategies for optimal Multi-agent Pathfinding (MAPF): (1) search-based methods, which model and solve MAPF directly, and (2) compilation-based solvers, which reduce MAPF to instances of well-known combinatorial problems, and thus, can benefit from advances in solver techniques. In this work, we present an optimal algorithm, BCP, that hybridizes both approaches … Read more

Scheduling Post-disaster Repairs in Electricity Distribution Networks with Uncertain Repair Times

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, large wind and ice storms, typically require the repair of a large number of components in electricity distribution networks. Since power cannot be restored before the completion of repairs, optimally scheduling the available crews to minimize the cumulative duration of the customer interruptions reduces the harm done to the affected … Read more

Order Acceptance in Same-Day Delivery

We study order acceptance dynamics in same-day delivery systems by formulating the Dynamic Dispatch Waves Problem with Immediate Acceptance, which models integrated request management and order distribution for dynamically arriving requests. When a delivery request arrives, a decision is made immediately to accept (offer service) or reject (with a penalty). Accepted requests are not available … Read more

Computational Enhancement in the Application of the Branch and Bound Method for Linear Integer Programs and Related Models

In this paper, a reformulation that was proposed for a knapsack problem has been extended to single and bi-objective linear integer programs. A further reformulation by adding an upper bound constraint for a knapsack problem is also proposed and extended to the bi-objective case. These reformulations significantly reduce the number of branch and bound iterations … Read more

Benders Decomposition with Adaptive Oracles for Large Scale Optimization

This paper proposes an algorithm to efficiently solve large optimization problems which exhibit a column bounded block-diagonal structure, where subproblems differ in right-hand side and cost coefficients. Similar problems are often tackled using cutting-plane algorithms, which allow for an iterative and decomposed solution of the problem. When solving subproblems is computationally expensive and the set … Read more

Logic-based Benders Decomposition and Binary Decision Diagram Based Approaches for Stochastic Distributed Operating Room Scheduling

The distributed operating room (OR) scheduling problem aims to find an assignment of surgeries to ORs across collaborating hospitals that share their waiting lists and ORs. We propose a stochastic extension of this problem where surgery durations are considered to be uncertain. In order to obtain solutions for the challenging stochastic model, we use sample … Read more

Constraint Programming Approaches for the Discretizable Molecular Distance Geometry Problem

The Distance Geometry Problem (DGP) seeks to find positions for a set of points in geometric space when some distances between pairs of these points are known. The so-called discretization assumptions allow to discretize the search space of DGP instances. In this paper, we focus on a key subclass of DGP, namely the Discretizable Molecular … Read more

An Exact Solution Approach for the Inventory Routing Problem with Time Windows

The inventory routing problem (IRP) is an integrated inventory and transportation planning problem that jointly determines the replenishment schedules for a given set of retailers, and the routing decisions for a supplier that distributes a product to the retailers over a finite planning horizon typically consisting of multiple periods. In the classical IRP, retailers are … Read more

Navigating Concave Regions in Continuous Facility Location Problems

In prior literature regarding facility location problems, there has been little explicit acknowledgement of problems arising from concave (non-convex) regions. By extension, there is a distinct deficiency in existing methods to deal with them outside of problem relaxation. In this work, we present a novel algorithm for finding representative regional center-points, referred to as “Concave … Read more