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

On decomposability of the multilinear polytope and its implications in mixed-integer nonlinear optimization

In this article, we provide an overview of some of our recent results on the facial structure of the multilinear polytope with a special focus on its decomposability properties. Namely, we demonstrate that, in the context of mixed-integer nonlinear optimization, the decomposability of the multilinear polytope plays a key role from both theoretical and algorithmic … Read more

The running intersection relaxation of the multilinear polytope

The multilinear polytope MP_G of a hypergraph G is the convex hull of a set of binary points satisfying a collection of multilinear equations. We introduce the running-intersection inequalities, a new class of facet-defining inequalities for the multilinear polytope. Accordingly, we define a new polyhedral relaxation of MP_G referred to as the running-intersection relaxation and … Read more

Distributionally Robust Linear and Discrete Optimization with Marginals

In this paper, we study the class of linear and discrete optimization problems in which the objective coefficients are chosen randomly from a distribution, and the goal is to evaluate robust bounds on the expected optimal value as well as the marginal distribution of the optimal solution. The set of joint distributions is assumed to … Read more

On the Consistent Path Problem

The application of decision diagrams in combinatorial optimization has proliferated in the last decade. In recent years, authors have begun to investigate how to utilize not one, but a set of diagrams, to model constraints and objective function terms. Optimizing over a collection of decision diagrams, the problem we refer to as the consistent path … Read more

Network Models for Multiobjective Discrete Optimization

This paper provides a novel framework for solving multiobjective discrete optimization problems with an arbitrary number of objectives. Our framework formulates these problems as network models, in that enumerating the Pareto frontier amounts to solving a multicriteria shortest path problem in an auxiliary network. We design tools and techniques for exploiting the network model in … Read more

Binary Extended Formulations of Polyhedral Mixed-integer Sets

We analyze different ways of constructing binary extended formulations of polyhedral mixed-integer sets with bounded integer variables and compare their relative strength with respect to split cuts. We show that among all binary extended formulations where each bounded integer variable is represented by a distinct collection of binary variables, what we call “unimodular” extended formulations … Read more

MILP feasibility by nonlinear programming

We discuss a tightly feasible mixed-integer linear programs arising in the energy industry, for which branch-and-bound appears to be ineffective. We consider its hardness, measure the probability that randomly generated instances are feasible or almost feasible, and introduce heuristic solution methods based on relaxing different constraints of the problem. We show the computational efficiency of … Read more

An algorithm for binary chance-constrained problems using IIS

We propose an algorithm based on infeasible irreducible subsystems (IIS) to solve general binary chance-constrained problems. By leverag- ing on the problem structure we are able to generate good quality upper bounds to the optimal value early in the algorithm, and the discrete do- main is used to guide us eciently in the search of … Read more

A Branch-and-Price Algorithm for Capacitated Hypergraph Vertex Separation

We exactly solve the NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem of finding a minimum cardinality vertex separator with k (or arbitrarily many) capacitated shores in a hypergraph. We present an exponential size integer programming formulation which we solve by branch-and-price. The pricing problem, an interesting optimization problem on its own, has a decomposable structure that we exploit … Read more