This paper studies Distributionally robust Fair transit Resource Allocation model (DrFRAM) under Wasserstein ambiguity set to optimize the public transit resource allocation during a pandemic. We show that the proposed DrFRAM is highly nonconvex and nonlinear and is, in general, NP-hard. Fortunately, we show that DrFRAM can be reformulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) … Read more
We study adjustable distributionally robust optimization problems where their ambiguity sets can potentially encompass an infinite number of expectation constraints. Although such an ambiguity set has great modeling flexibility in characterizing uncertain probability distributions, the corresponding adjustable problems remain computationally intractable and challenging. To overcome this issue, we propose a greedy improvement procedure that consists … Read more
A sequential quadratic optimization algorithm is proposed for solving smooth nonlinear equality constrained optimization problems in which the objective function is defined by an expectation of a stochastic function. The algorithmic structure of the proposed method is based on a step decomposition strategy that is known in the literature to be widely effective in practice, … Read more
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) can be solved in polynomial time by interior point methods. However, when the dimension of the problem gets large, interior point methods become impractical in terms of both computational time and memory requirements. Certain first-order methods, such as Alternating Direction Methods of Multipliers (ADMMs), established as suitable algorithms to deal with large-scale … Read more
We seek to provide practicable approximations of the two-stage robust stochastic optimization (RSO) model when its ambiguity set is constructed with an f-divergence radius. These models are known to be numerically challenging to various degrees, depending on the choice of the f-divergence function. The numerical challenges are even more pronounced under mixed-integer rst-stage decisions. In … Read more
A classical approach for obtaining valid inequalities for a set involves weighted aggregations of the inequalities that describe such set. When the set is described by linear inequalities, thanks to the Farkas lemma, we know that every valid inequality can be obtained using aggregations. When the inequalities describing the set are two quadratics, Yildiran showed … Read more
We propose a stochastic first-order trust-region method with inexact function and gradient evaluations for solving finite-sum minimization problems. At each iteration, the function and the gradient are approximated by sampling. The sample size in gradient approximations is smaller than the sample size in function approximations and the latter is determined using a deterministic rule inspired … Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many countries to their knees, and the urgency to return to normalcy has never been greater. Epidemiological models, such as the SEIR compartmental model, are indispensable tools for, among other things, predicting how pandemic may spread over time and how vaccinations and different public health interventions could affect the outcome. … Read more
The Graphical Traveling Salesperson Problem (GTSP) is the problem of assigning, for a given weighted graph, a nonnegative number x_e to each edge e such that the induced multi-subgraph is of minimum weight among those that are spanning, connected and Eulerian. Naturally, known mixed-integer programming formulations use integer variables x_e in addition to others. Denis … Read more
Invented some 65 years ago in a seminal paper by Marguerite Straus-Frank and Philip Wolfe, the Frank-Wolfe method recently enjoys a remarkable revival, fuelled by the need of fast and reliable first-order optimization methods in Data Science and other relevant application areas. This review tries to explain the success of this approach by illustrating versatility … Read more