Branch-and-bound and objective branching with three objectives

The recent success of bi-objective Branch-and-Bound (B&B) algorithms heavily relies on the efficient computation of upper and lower bound sets. Besides the classical dominance test, bound sets are used to improve the computational time by imposing inequalities derived from (partial) dominance in the objective space. This process is called objective branching since it is mostly … Read more

An approximation algorithm for multi-objective optimization problems using a box-coverage

For a continuous multi-objective optimization problem, it is usually not a practical approach to compute all its nondominated points because there are infinitely many of them. For this reason, a typical approach is to compute an approximation of the nondominated set. A common technique for this approach is to generate a polyhedron which contains the … Read more

Bicriteria approaches for an optimal balance between resilience and cost-effectiveness of supply chains

In supply chain optimization multiple objectives are considered simultaneously, for example to increase resilience and reduce costs. In this paper we discuss the corresponding bicriteria problems to find a good balance between these two objectives. We give a general model for supply chain resilience that integrates strategic decisions with the operational level. This modular model … Read more

Precise control of approximation quality in multicriteria optimization

Although many algorithms for multicriteria optimization provide good approximations, a precise control of their quality is challenging. In this paper we provide algorithmic tools to obtain exact approximation quality values for given approximations and develop a new method for multicriteria optimization guided by this quality. We show that the well-established “-indicator measure is NP-hard to … Read more

Using first-order information in Direct Multisearch for multiobjective optimization

Derivatives are an important tool for single-objective optimization. In fact, it is commonly accepted that derivative-based methods present a better performance than derivative-free optimization approaches. In this work, we will show that the same does not apply to multiobjective derivative-based optimization, when the goal is to compute an approximation to the complete Pareto front of … Read more

Globally convergent Newton-type methods for multiobjective optimization

We propose two Newton-type methods for solving (possibly) nonconvex unconstrained multiobjective optimization problems. The first is directly inspired by the Newton method designed to solve convex problems, whereas  the second uses  second-order information of the objective functions with ingredients of the steepest descent method.  One of the key points of our approaches  is to impose … Read more

Accuracy and fairness trade-offs in machine learning: A stochastic multi-objective approach

In the application of machine learning to real life decision-making systems, e.g., credit scoring and criminal justice, the prediction outcomes might discriminate against people with sensitive attributes, leading to unfairness. The commonly used strategy in fair machine learning is to include fairness as a constraint or a penalization term in the minimization of the prediction … Read more

A conjugate directions-type procedure for quadratic multiobjective optimization

We propose an extension of the real-valued conjugate directions method for unconstrained quadratic multiobjective problems. As in the single-valued counterpart, the procedure requires a set of directions that are simultaneously conjugate with respect to the positive definite matrices of all quadratic objective components. Likewise, the multicriteria version computes the steplength by means of the unconstrained … Read more

An Adaptive Patch Approximation Algorithm for Bicriteria Convex Mixed Integer problems

Pareto frontiers of bicriteria continuous convex problems can be efficiently computed and optimal theoretical performance bounds have been established. In the case of bicriteria mixed-integer problems, the approximation of the Pareto frontier becomes, however, significantly harder. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for approximating the Pareto frontier of bicriteria mixed-integer programs with convex … Read more

A general branch-and-bound framework for continuous global multiobjective optimization

Current generalizations of the central ideas of single-objective branch-and-bound to the multiobjective setting do not seem to follow their train of thought all the way. The present paper complements the various suggestions for generalizations of partial lower bounds and of overall upper bounds by general constructions for overall lower bounds from partial lower bounds, and … Read more