The cooperative orienteering problem with time windows

In this we paper we define a new class of the team orienteering problem; the cooperative orienteering problem with time windows (COPTW). The COPTW is a generalisation of the TOPTW, which requires multiple vehicles to cooperatively collect the reward from a location. The COPTW is demonstrated with the aid of a wildfire scenario in South … Read more

On Auction Models of Conflict with Network Applications

We consider several models of complex systems with active elements and show that the auction mechanism appears very natural in attaining proper equilibrium states, even in comparison with game theory ones. In particular, network equilibria are treated as implementation of the auction principle. An additional example of resource allocation in wireless communication networks is also … Read more

Bound Improvement for LNG Inventory Routing

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is steadily becoming a common mode for commercializing natural gas. In this paper, we develop methods for improving both lower and upper bounds for a previously stated form of an LNG inventory routing problem. A Dantzig-Wolfe-based decomposition approach is developed for LNG inventory routing problem (LNG-IRP) attempting to overcome poor lower … Read more

Planning for Mining Operations with Time and Resource Constraints

We study a daily mine planning problem where, given a set of blocks we wish to mine, our task is to generate a mining sequence for the excavators such that blending resource constraints are met at various stages of the sequence. Such time-oriented resource constraints are not traditionally handled well by automated planners. On the … Read more

Minimum Cost Path Problem for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

We introduce a practically important and theoretically challenging problem: finding the minimum cost path for PHEVs in a road network with refueling and charging stations. We show that this problem is NP-complete and present a mixed integer quadratically constrained formulation, a discrete approximation dynamic programming heuristic, and a shortest path heuristic as solution methodologies. Practical … Read more

Constraint Programming for LNG Ship Scheduling and Inventory Management

We propose a constraint programming approach for the optimization of inventory routing in the liquefied natural gas industry. We present two constraint programming models that rely on a disjunctive scheduling representation of the problem. We also propose an iterative search heuristic to generate good feasible solutions for these models. Computational results on a set of … Read more

Approaches to a real-world train timetabling problem in a railway node

We consider the Train Timetabling Problem (TTP) in a railway node (i.e. a set of stations in an urban area interconnected by tracks), which calls for determining the best schedule for a given set of trains during a given time horizon, while satisfying several track operational constraints. In particular, we consider the context of a … Read more

Price of Anarchy for Non-atomic Congestion Games with Stochastic Demands

We generalize the notions of user equilibrium and system optimum to non-atomic congestion games with stochastic demands. We establish upper bounds on the price of anarchy for three different settings of link cost functions and demand distributions, namely, (a) affine cost functions and general distributions, (b) polynomial cost functions and general positive-valued distributions, and (c) … Read more

Optimization Models for Differentiating Quality of Service Levels in Probabilistic Network Capacity Design Problems

This paper develops various chance-constrained models for optimizing the probabilistic network design problem (PNDP), where we differentiate the quality of service (QoS) and measure the related network performance under uncertain demand. The upper level problem of PNDP designs continuous/discrete link capacities shared by multi-commodity flows, and the lower level problem differentiates the corresponding QoS for … Read more

Two-Stage Decomposition Algorithms for Single Product Maritime Inventory Routing

We present two decomposition algorithms for single product deep-sea maritime inventory routing problems (MIRPs) that possess a core substructure common in many real-world applications. The problem involves routing vessels, each belonging to a particular vessel class, between loading and discharging ports, each belonging to a particular region. Our algorithms iteratively solve a MIRP by zooming … Read more