Hardness of some optimization problems over correlation polyhedra

We prove the NP-hardness, using Karp reductions, of some problems related to the correlation polytope and its corresponding cone, spanned by all of the n×n rank-one matrices over {0, 1}. The problems are: membership, rank of the decomposition, and a “relaxed rank” obtained from relaxing the zero-norm expression for the rank to an ℓ1 norm. … Read more

Modeling Adversarial Wildfires for Power Grid Disruption

Electric power infrastructure faces increasing risk of damage and disruption due to wildfire. Operators of power grids in wildfire-prone regions must consider the potential impacts of unpredictable fires. However, traditional wildfire models do not effectively describe worst-case, or even high-impact, fire behavior. To address this issue, we propose a mixed-integer conic program to characterize an … Read more

Modeling Network Congestion under Demand Uncertainty Using Wardrop Principles

Motivated by the need for reliable traffic management under fluctuating travel demand, we study the problem of determining the worst-case congestion in a multi-commodity traffic network subject to demand uncertainty. To this end, we stress-test a given network by identifying demand realizations and corresponding travelers’ route choices that maximize congestion. The users of the traffic … Read more

From Computational Certification to Exact Coordinates: Heilbronn’s Triangle Problem on the Unit Square Using Mixed-Integer Optimization

We develop an optimize-then-refine framework for the classical Heilbronn triangle problem that integrates global mixed-integer nonlinear programming with exact symbolic computation. A novel symmetry-breaking strategy, together with the exploitation of structural properties of determinants, yields a substantially stronger optimization model: for n=9, the problem can be solved to certified global optimality in 15 minutes on … Read more

Solving Convex Quadratic Optimization with Indicators Over Structured Graphs

This paper studies convex quadratic minimization problems in which each continuous variable is coupled with a binary indicator variable. We focus on the structured setting where the Hessian matrix of the quadratic term is positive definite and exhibits sparsity. We develop an exact parametric dynamic programming algorithm whose computational complexity depends explicitly on the treewidth … Read more

Separating Hyperplanes for Mixed-Integer Polynomial Optimization Problems

Algorithms based on polyhedral outer approximations provide a powerful approach to solving mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems. An initial relaxation of the feasible set is strengthened by iteratively adding linear inequalities and separating infeasible points. However, when the constraints are nonconvex, computing such separating hyperplanes becomes challenging. In this article, the moment-/sums-of-squares hierarchy is used in … Read more

Tight semidefinite programming relaxations for sparse box-constrained quadratic programs

We introduce a new class of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for sparse box-constrained quadratic programs, obtained by a novel integration of the Reformulation Linearization Technique into standard SDP relaxations while explicitly exploiting the sparsity of the problem. The resulting relaxations are not implied by the existing LP and SDP relaxations for this class of optimization … Read more

Fast Presolving Framework For Sparsity Constrained Convex Quadratic Programming: Screening-Based Cut Generation and Selection

Screening is widely utilized for Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) presolving. It aims to certify a priori whether one or multiple specific binary variables can be fixed to optimal values based on solutions from convex relaxations. This paper studies the challenge of solving Sparsity-constrained (strongly) Convex Quadratic Programming (SCQP) and proposes the Screening-based Cut Presolving Framework (SCPF). … Read more

Exact and approximate formulations for the close-enough TSP

This work addresses the Close-Enough Traveling Salesman Problem (CETSP), a variant of the classic traveling salesman problem in which we seek to visit neighborhoods of points in the plane (defined as disks) rather than specific points. We present two exact formulations for this problem based on second-order cone programming (SOCP), along with approximated mixed-integer linear … Read more

The Fulfillment Regionalization Problem

In many retail industries, the retailer can choose the inventory location or fulfillment center (FC) that fulfills an order, yielding opportunities for inventory pooling and product selection expansion. However, fulfillment decisions are complex and must consider cost and speed, among various factors. With the unprecedented growth of the retail industry, companies must look for strategies … Read more