A Critical Survey on the Network Optimization Algorithms for Evacuation Planning Problems

In the last decades, research on emergency traffic management has received high attention from the operations research community and many pioneer researchers have established it as one of the most fertile research areas. We consider the computationally hard flows over time problems from wider perspective including flow/time dependent attributes (dynamic flows), a possibility of flows … Read more

Best case exponential running time of a branch-and-bound algorithm using an optimal semidefinite relaxation

Chvatal (1980) has given a simple example of a knapsack problem for which a branch-and-bound algorithm using domination and linear relaxations to eliminate subproblems will use an exponential number of steps in the best case. In this short note it is shown that Chvatals result remains true when the LP relaxation is replaced with a … Read more

On a reduction of the weighted induced bipartite subgraph problem to the weighted independent set problem

We study the weighted induced bipartite subgraph problem (WIBSP). The goal of WIBSP is, given a graph and nonnegative weights for the nodes, to find a set W of nodes with the maximum total weight such that a subgraph induced by W is bipartite. WIBSP is also referred as to the graph bipartization problem or … Read more

Why is maximum clique often easy in practice?

To this day, the maximum clique problem remains a computationally challenging problem. Indeed, despite researchers’ best efforts, there exist unsolved benchmark instances with one thousand vertices. However, relatively simple algorithms solve real-life instances with millions of vertices in a few seconds. Why is this the case? Why is the problem apparently so easy in many … Read more

The sharpest column: stabilizing column generation for the bin packing problem via a lexicographic pricer

In spite of being an extremely successful method to tackle mathematical programs involving a very large number of variables, Column Generation (CG) is known to suffer from stabilization issues which can slow down its convergence significantly. In this article, we propose a new parameter-free stabilization technique for CG based on solving a lexicographic pricing problem. … Read more

A Note on “A linear-size zero-one programming model for the minimum spanning tree problem in planar graphs”

In the paper “A linear-size zero-one programming model for the minimum spanning tree problem in planar graphs” (Networks 39(1):53–60, 2002), Williams introduced an extended formulation for the spanning tree polytope of a planar graph. This formulation is remarkably small (using only $O(n)$ variables and constraints) and remarkably strong (defining an integral polytope). In this note, … Read more

An Enhanced Branch and Price Algorithm for the Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

In this paper we implement a branch and price (BP) algorithm for a time dependent vehicle routing problem with time windows (TDVRPTW) in which the goal is to minimize the total route duration (DM-TDVRPTW). The travel time between two customers depends on the departure time and, thus, it need not remain fixed along the planning … Read more

New facets for the consecutive ones polytope

A 0/1 matrix has the Consecutive Ones Property if a permutation of its columns exists such that the ones appear consecutively in each row. In many applications, one has to find a matrix having the consecutive ones property and optimizing a linear objective function. For this problem, literature proposes, among other approaches, an Integer Linear … Read more

A Lagrange decomposition based Branch and Bound algorithm for the Optimal Mapping of Cloud Virtual Machines

One of the challenges of cloud computing is to optimally and efficiently assign virtual machines to physical machines. The aim of telecommunication operators is to mini- mize the mapping cost while respecting constraints regarding location, assignment and capacity. In this paper we first propose an exact formulation leading to a 0-1 bilinear constrained problem. Then … Read more

Benders Decomposition for Very Large Scale Partial Set Covering and Maximal Covering Problems

Covering problems constitute an important family of facility location problems. This paper intro- duces a new exact algorithm for two important members of this family: i) the maximal covering location problem, which requires finding a subset of facilities that maximizes the amount of demand covered while respecting a budget constraint on the cost of the … Read more