Improving Column-Generation for Vehicle Routing Problems via Random Coloring and Parallelization

We consider a variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) where each customer has a unit demand and the goal is to minimize the total cost of routing a fleet of capacitated vehicles from one or multiple depots to visit all customers. We propose two parallel algorithms to efficiently solve the column-generation based linear-programming relaxation … Read more

A tailored Benders decomposition approach for last-mile delivery with autonomous robots

This work addresses an operational problem of a logistics service provider that consists of finding an optimal route for a vehicle carrying customer parcels from a central depot to selected facilities, from where autonomous devices like robots are launched to perform last-mile deliveries. The objective is to minimize a tardiness indicator based on the customer … Read more

Commodity Prioritized Maximum Dynamic Multi-Commodity Flow Problem

Due to different disasters, natural or men made, world is facing the problem of massive damage of life and property. To save the life of maximum number of evacuees, an efficient evacuation planning is essential. Prioritization is the process of deciding the relative importance or urgency of things or objects. It helps to focus on … Read more

Optimal Steiner Trees Under Node and Edge Privacy Conflicts

In this work, we suggest concepts and solution methodologies for a series of strategic network design problems that find application in highly data-sensitive industries, such as, for instance, the high-tech, governmental, or military sector. Our focus is on the installation of widely used cost-efficient tree-structured communication infrastructure. As base model we use the well-known Steiner … Read more

The Non-Stop Disjoint Trajectories Problem

Consider an undirected network with traversal times on its edges and a set of commodities with connection requests from sources to destinations and release dates. The non-stop disjoint trajectories problem is to find trajectories that fulfill all requests, such that the commodities never meet. In this extension to the \NP-complete disjoint paths problem, trajectories must … Read more

A Two-level ADMM Algorithm for AC OPF with Convergence Guarantees

This paper proposes a two-level distributed algorithmic framework for solving the AC optimal power flow (OPF) problem with convergence guarantees. The presence of highly nonconvex constraints in OPF poses significant challenges to distributed algorithms based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). In particular, convergence is not provably guaranteed for nonconvex network optimization problems … Read more

A Shared Mobility Based Framework for Evacuation Planning and Operations under Forecast Uncertainty

To meet evacuation needs from carless populations who may require personalized assistance to evacuate safely, we propose a ridesharing-based evacuation program that recruits volunteer drivers before a disaster strikes, and then matches volunteers with evacuees who need assistance once demand is realized. We optimize resource planning and evacuation operations under uncertain spatiotemporal demand, and construct … Read more

Strategic Positioning of Empty Containers and Minimising Backhauls in Inland Supply Chain Network

An end-to-end supply chain operation for inland logistics requires coordination and planning among various operations of import pickups, export delivery and empty container positioning for reuse and evacuations of unused containers through the ports. A major business goal of all these operations focuses on reducing the transport costs by utilizing maximum network capacity across active … Read more

Priority Based Flow Improvement with Intermediate Storage

Every models in the network flow theory aim to increase flow value from the sources to the sinks and reduce time or cost satisfying the capacity and flow conservation constraints. Recently, the network flow model without flow conservation constraints at the intermediate nodes has been investigated by Pyakurel and Dempe \cite{pyadem:2019}. In this model, if … Read more

Improved optimization models for potential-driven network flow problems via ASTS orientations

The class of potential-driven network flow problems provides important models for a range of infrastructure networks that lead to hard-to-solve MINLPs in real-world applications. On large-scale meshed networks the relaxations usually employed are rather weak due to cycles in the network. To address this situation, we introduce the concept of ASTS orientations, a generalization of … Read more