Robust Optimization for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Deliverymen

This paper studies the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple deliverymen in which customer demands are uncertain and belong to a predetermined polytope. In addition to the routing decisions, this problem aims to define the number of deliverymen used to provide the service to the customers on each route. A new mathematical formulation … Read more

Robust Utility Maximization with Drift and Volatility Uncertainty

We give explicit solutions for utility optimization problems in the presence of Knightian uncertainty in continuous time with nondominated priors and finite time horizon in a diffusion model. We assume that the uncertainty set is compact and time dependent on $[0,T]$. We solve the robust optimization problem explicitly both when the investor’s utility is of … Read more

Analyzing Tax Incentives for Producing Renewable Energy by Biomass Cofiring

This paper examines the impacts of governmental incentives for coal-fired power plants to generate renewable energy via biomass cofiring technology. The most common incentive is the production tax credit (PTC), a flat rate reimbursement for each unit of renewable energy generated. The work presented here proposes PTC alternatives, incentives that are functions of plant capacity … Read more

Distributionally Robust Markovian Traffic Equilibrium

Stochastic user equilibrium models are fundamental to the analysis of transportation systems. Such models are typically developed under the assumption of route based choice models for the users. A class of link based models under a Markovian assumption on the route choice behavior of the users has been proposed to deal with the drawbacks of … Read more

Error bounds for rank constrained optimization problems and applications

This paper is concerned with the rank constrained optimization problem whose feasible set is the intersection of the rank constraint set $\mathcal{R}=\!\big\{X\in\mathbb{X}\ |\ {\rm rank}(X)\le \kappa\big\}$ and a closed convex set $\Omega$. We establish the local (global) Lipschitzian type error bounds for estimating the distance from any $X\in \Omega$ ($X\in\mathbb{X}$) to the feasible set and … Read more

Exact penalty decomposition method for zero-norm minimization based on MPEC formulation

We reformulate the zero-norm minimization problem as an equivalent mathematical program with equilibrium constraints and establish that its penalty problem, induced by adding the complementarity constraint to the objective, is exact. Then, by the special structure of the exact penalty problem, we propose a decomposition method that can seek a global optimal solution of the … Read more

On the complexity of the Unit Commitment Problem

This article analyzes how the Unit Commitment Problem (UCP) complexity evolves with respect to the number n of units and T of time periods.A classical reduction from the knapsack problem shows that the UCP is NP-hard in the ordinary sense even for T=1. The UCP is proved to be strongly NP-hard.When either a unitary cost … Read more

Branch-and-cut methods for the Network Design Problem with Vulnerability Constraints

The aim of Network Design Problem with Vulnerability Constraints (NDPVC), introduced by Gouveia and Leitner [EJOR, 2017], is to design survivable telecommunications networks that impose length bounds on the communication paths of each commodity pair, before and after the failure of any k links. This problem was proposed as an alternative to the Hop-Constrained Survivable … Read more

A Multilevel Model of the European Entry-Exit Gas Market

In entry-exit gas markets as they are currently implemented in Europe, network constraints do not affect market interaction beyond the technical capacities determined by the TSO that restrict the quantities individual firms can trade at the market. It is an up to now unanswered question to what extent existing network capacity remains unused in an … Read more

The uncapacitated p-hub center problem under the existence of zero flows

In this study, we consider the special case of the uncapacitated p-hub center problem, where the weight/flow matrix includes 0 entities. In some real life networks, such as airline networks, cargo networks etc., the zero flow might exist between certain demand points. Typically in airline networks, nobody travels from city i to city i. In … Read more