We investigate how the numerical properties of the LP relaxations evolve throughout the solution procedure in a solver employing the branch-and-cut algorithm. The long-term goal of this work is to determine whether the effect on the numerical conditioning of the LP relaxations resulting from the branching and cutting operations can be effectively predicted and whether … Read more
In Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation of an integer program one convexifies a subset of the constraints, leading to potentially stronger dual bounds from the respective linear programming relaxation. As the subset can be chosen arbitrarily, this includes the trivial cases of convexifying no and all constraints, resulting in a weakest and strongest reformulation, respectively. Our computational study … Read more
Many problems in real life have more than one decision criterion, referred to as multi-objective optimization (MOO) problems, and the objective functions of these problems are conflicting in most cases. Hence, finding non-dominated solutions is very critical for decision making process. Tri-objective mixed-integer linear programs (TOMILP) are an important subclass of MOOs that are applicable … Read more
Solving mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) is hard in theory and practice. Decomposing the nonlinear and the integer part seems promising from a computational point of view. In general, however, no bounds on the objective value gap can be guaranteed and iterative procedures with potentially many subproblems are necessary. The situation is different for mixed-integer optimal … Read more
We consider the problem of discrete arc sizing for tree-shaped potential networks with respect to infinitely many demand scenarios. This means that the arc sizes need to be feasible for an infinite set of scenarios. The problem can be seen as a strictly robust counterpart of a single-scenario network design problem, which is shown to … Read more
Equipment failures, operator errors, natural disasters and cyber-attacks can and have caused extended blackouts of the electric grid. Even though such events are rare, preparedness for them is critical because extended power outages endanger human lives, compromise national security, or result in economic losses of billions of dollars. Since most of the generating units cannot … Read more
We consider the clique problem with multiple-choice constraints (CPMC) and characterize a case where it is possible to give an efficient description of the convex hull of its feasible solutions. This new special case, which we call staircase compatibility, generalizes common properties in several applications and allows for a linear description of the integer feasible … Read more
A general enhancement of the Benders’ decomposition algorithm can be achieved through the improved use of large neighbourhood search heuristics within mixed-integer programming solvers. While mixed-integer programming solvers are endowed with an array of large neighbourhood search heuristics, their use is typically limited to finding solutions to the Benders’ decomposition master problem, which may be … Read more
We investigate the complexity of deep neural networks (DNN) that represent piecewise linear (PWL) functions. In particular, we study the number of linear regions, i.e. pieces, that a PWL function represented by a DNN can attain, both theoretically and empirically. We present (i) tighter upper and lower bounds for the maximum number of linear regions … Read more
The lexicographic order can be used to force a collection of decision vectors to be all different, i.e., to take on different values in some coordinates. We consider the set of fixed-size matrices with bounded integer entries and rows in lexicographic order. We present a dynamic program to optimize a linear function over this set, … Read more