Quantifying uncertainty with ensembles of surrogates for blackbox optimization

This work is in the context of blackbox optimization where the functions defining the problem are expensive to evaluate and where no derivatives are available. A tried and tested technique is to build surrogates of the objective and the constraints in order to conduct the optimization at a cheaper computational cost. This work proposes different … Read more

An extension of the Reformulation-Linearization Technique to nonlinear optimization

We introduce a novel Reformulation-Perspectification Technique (RPT) to obtain convex approximations of nonconvex continuous optimization problems. RPT consists of two steps, those are, a reformulation step and a perspectification step. The reformulation step generates redundant nonconvex constraints from pairwise multiplication of the existing constraints. The perspectification step then convexifies the nonconvex components by using perspective … Read more

Polyhedral Analysis of a Polytope from a Service Center Location Problem with a Special Decision-Dependent Customer Demand

This paper establishes and analyzes a service center location model with a simple but novel decision-dependent demand induced from a maximum attraction principle. The model formulations are investigated in the distributionally-robust optimization framework for the capacitated and uncapacitated cases. A statistical model that is based on the maximum attraction principle for estimating customer demand and … Read more

Inexact Sequential Quadratic Optimization for Minimizing a Stochastic Objective Function Subject to Deterministic Nonlinear Equality Constraints

An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested experimentally for solving stochastic optimization problems in which the decision variables are constrained to satisfy equations defined by deterministic, smooth, and nonlinear functions. It is assumed that constraint function and derivative values can be computed, but that only stochastic approximations are available for the objective function and its … Read more

A framework for convex-constrained monotone nonlinear equations and its special cases

This work refers to methods for solving convex-constrained monotone nonlinear equations. We first propose a framework, which is obtained by combining a safeguard strategy on the search directions with a notion of approximate projections. The global convergence of the framework is established under appropriate assumptions and some examples of methods which fall into this framework … Read more

A study of Liu-Storey conjugate gradient methods for vector optimization

This work presents a study of Liu-Storey (LS) nonlinear conjugate gradient (CG) methods to solve vector optimization problems. Three variants of the LS-CG method originally designed to solve single-objective problems are extended to the vector setting. The first algorithm restricts the LS conjugate parameter to be nonnegative and use a sufficiently accurate line search satisfying … Read more

High-Rank Matrix Completion by Integer Programming

In the High-Rank Matrix Completion (HRMC) problem, we are given a collection of n data points, arranged into columns of a matrix X, and each of the data points is observed only on a subset of its coordinates. The data points are assumed to be concentrated near a union of low-dimensional subspaces. The goal of … Read more

Completely Positive Factorization by a Riemannian Smoothing Method

Copositive optimization is a special case of convex conic programming, and it optimizes a linear function over the cone of all completely positive matrices under linear constraints. Copositive optimization provides powerful relaxations of NP-hard quadratic problems or combinatorial problems, but there are still many open problems regarding copositive or completely positive matrices. In this paper, … Read more

Solving the Home Service Assignment, Routing, and Appointment Scheduling (H-SARA) problem with Uncertainties

The Home Service Assignment, Routing, and Appointment scheduling (H-SARA) problem integrates the strategical fleet-sizing, tactical assignment, operational vehicle routing and scheduling subproblems at different decision levels, with a single period planning horizon and uncertainty (stochasticity) from the service duration, travel time, and customer cancellation rate. We propose a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model for … Read more

Integrated Vehicle Routing and Service Scheduling under Time and Cancellation Uncertainties with Application in Non-Emergency Medical Transportation

In this paper, we consider an integrated vehicle routing and service scheduling problem for serving customers in distributed locations who need pick-up, drop-off or delivery services. We take into account the random trip time, non-negligible service time and possible customer cancellations, under which an ill-designed schedule may lead to undesirable vehicle idleness and customer waiting. … Read more