Adaptive Elective Surgery Planning Under Duration and Length-Of-Stay Uncertainty: A Robust Optimization Approach

Scheduling elective surgeries is a complicated task due to the coupled effect of multiple sources of uncertainty and the impact of the proposed schedule on the downstream units. In this paper, we propose an adaptive robust optimization model to address the existing uncertainty in surgery duration and length-of-stay in the surgical intensive care unit. The … Read more

A Study of Three-Period Ramp-Up Polytope

We study the polyhedron of the unit commitment problem, and consider a relaxation involving the ramping constraints. We study the three-period ramp-up polytope, and describe the convex-hull using a new class of inequalities. Citation [1] J. Ostrowski, M. F. Anjos, and A. Vannelli, \Tight mixed integer linear programming formulations for the unit commitment problem,” Power … Read more

Improving Public Transport Accessibility via Provision of a Dial-a-Ride Shuttle-Bus Service, Incorporating Passenger Travel-Mode Heterogeneity

In many real-world transportation systems, passengers are often required to make a number of interchanges between different modes of transport. As cities continue to grow, a greater number of these connections tend to occur within centrally located Transport Hubs. In order to encourage the uptake of public transport in major cities, it is important for … Read more

Integer Programming Approaches for Appointment Scheduling with Random No-shows and Service Durations

We consider a single-server scheduling problem given a fixed sequence of appointment arrivals with random no-shows and service durations. The probability distribution of the uncertain parameters is assumed to be ambiguous and only the support and first moments are known. We formulate a class of distributionally robust (DR) optimization models that incorporate the worst-case expectation/conditional … Read more

The Value of Stochastic Programming in Day-Ahead and Intraday Generation Unit Commitment

The recent expansion of renewable energy supplies has prompted the development of a variety of efficient stochastic optimization models and solution techniques for hydro-thermal scheduling. However, little has been published about the added value of stochastic models over deterministic ones. In the context of day-ahead and intraday unit commitment under wind uncertainty, we compare two-stage … Read more

An MILP-MINLP decomposition method for the global optimization of a source based model of the multiperiod blending problem

The multiperiod blending problem involves binary variables and bilinear terms, yielding a nonconvex MINLP. In this work we present two major contributions for the global solution of the problem. The rst one is an alternative formulation of the problem. This formulation makes use of redundant constraints that improve the MILP relaxation of the MINLP. The … Read more

Compromise Ratio with weighting functions in a Tabu Search multi-criteria approach to examination timetabling

University examination scheduling is a difficult and heavily administrative task, particularly when the number of students and courses is high. Changes in educational paradigms, an increase in the number of students, the aggregation of schools, more flexible curricula, among others, are responsible for an increase in the difficulty of the problem. As a consequence, there … Read more

Robust optimization based EV charging

With the introduction of new technologies like electric vehicles and smart grids the operation and planning of power systems are subject to major changes. These technologies can bring various ftexibilities to different entities involved in decision making. This paper proposes a robust optimization based method to optimal charging/discharging of electric vehicles con­ sidering the electricity … 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

Approximate Uni-directional Benders Decomposition

We examine a decomposition approach to find good quality feasible solutions. In particular, we study a method to reduce the search-space by decomposing a problem into two partitions, where the second partition (i.e., the subproblem) contains the fixed solution of the first (i.e., the master). This type of approach is usually motivated by the presence … Read more