Data-Driven Optimization for Meal Delivery: A Reinforcement Learning Approach for Order-Courier Assignment and Routing at Meituan

  • Ramon Auad
  • Felipe Lagos
  • Tomas Lagos
    • Categories Dynamic Programming, Meta Heuristics, Transportation Tags

    The rapid growth of online meal delivery has introduced complex logistical challenges, where platforms must dynamically assign orders to couriers while accounting for demand uncertainty, courier autonomy, and service efficiency. Traditional dispatching methods, often focused on short-term cost minimization, fail to capture the long-term implications of assignment decisions on system-wide performance. This paper presents a … Read more

    blockSQP 2: exploiting structure to improve performance

  • Reinhold Wittmann
  • Sebastian Sager
    • Categories Dynamic Programming, Nonlinear Optimization Tags , , , ,

    Abstract One approach to solving optimal control problems is Bock’s direct multiple shoot- ing method. This method yields lifted nonlinear optimization problems (NLPs) with a spe- cific block structure. Exploiting this structure via tailored optimization algorithms can be computationally beneficial. We propose such methods, primarily within the framework of fil- ter line search sequential quadratic … Read more

    Extreme Strong Branching for QCQPs

  • Santanu S. Dey
  • Dahye Han
  • Yang Wang
    • Categories (Mixed) Integer Nonlinear Programming, Applications - OR and Management Sciences, Global Optimization

    For mixed-integer programs (MIPs), strong branching is a highly effective variable selection method to reduce the number of nodes in the branch-and-bound algorithm. Extending it to nonlinear problems is conceptually simple but practically limited. Branching on a binary variable fixes the variable to 0 or 1, whereas branching on a continuous variable requires an additional … Read more

    Optimizing pricing strategies through learning the market structure

  • Khosroparviz Naderivarandi
  • Ezgi Karabulut
  • Burak Gokgur
    • Categories Optimization in Data Science, Yield Management Tags , , ,

    This study explores the integration of market structure learning into pricing strategies to maximize revenue in e-commerce and retail environments. We consider the problem of determining the revenue maximizing price of a single product in a market of heterogeneous consumers segmented by their product valuations; and analyze the pricing strategies for varying levels of prior … Read more

    Smoothie: Mixing the strongest MIP solvers to solve hard MIP instances on supercomputers – Phase I development

  • Yuji Shinano
  • Stefan Vigerske
    • Categories (Mixed) Integer Linear Programming, Parallel Algorithms Tags , , ,

    Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MIP) is applicable to such a wide range of real-world decision problems that the competition for the best code to solve such problems has lead to tremendous progress over the last decades. While current solvers can solve some of the problems that seemed completely out-of-reach just 10 years ago, there are always … Read more

    Behaviorally Informed Planning for Retrofitting, Sheltering, and Mixed-Mode Evacuation in Urban Tsunami Preparedness: Toward a Tsunami-Resilient Istanbul

  • Shiva Moslemi
  • Vedat Bayram
  • Baris Yildiz
    • Categories (Mixed) Integer Linear Programming, Applications - OR and Management Sciences, Transportation Tags , , , , ,

    Tsunamis, primarily triggered by earthquakes, pose critical threats to coastal populations due to their rapid onset and limited evacuation time. Two main protective actions exist: sheltering in place, which requires substantial retrofitting investments, and evacuation, which is often hindered by congestion, mixed travel modes, and tight inundation times. Given pedestrians’ slower movement and restricted evacuation … Read more

    Political districting to maximize whole counties

  • Maral Shahmizad
  • Austin Buchanan
    • Categories Applications - OR and Management Sciences, Combinatorial Optimization, Integer Programming Tags , , ,

    We consider a fundamental question in political districting: How many counties can be kept whole (i.e., not split across multiple districts), while satisfying basic criteria like contiguity and population balance? To answer this question, we propose integer programming techniques based on combinatorial Benders decomposition. The main problem decides which counties to keep whole, and the … Read more

    Two-Stage Data-Driven Contextual Robust Optimization: An End-to-End Learning Approach for Online Energy Applications

  • Carlos Gamboa
  • Alexandre Street
  • Davi Valladão
  • Bernardo K. Pagnoncelli
    • Categories Energy, Robust Optimization, Stochastic Programming Tags , , ,

    Traditional end-to-end contextual robust optimization models are trained for specific contextual data, requiring complete retraining whenever new contextual information arrives. This limitation hampers their use in online decision-making problems such as energy scheduling, where multiperiod optimization must be solved every few minutes. In this paper, we propose a novel Data-Driven Contextual Uncertainty Set, which gives … Read more

    Convexification of a Separable Function over a Polyhedral Ground Set

  • Santanu S. Dey
  • Burak Kocuk
    • Categories Cone Programming, Convex Optimization, Global Optimization Tags , , , , ,

    In this paper, we study the set \(\mathcal{S}^\kappa = \{ (x,y)\in\mathcal{G}\times\mathbb{R}^n : y_j = x_j^\kappa , j=1,\dots,n\}\), where \(\kappa > 1\) and the ground set \(\mathcal{G}\) is a nonempty polytope contained in \( [0,1]^n\). This nonconvex set is closely related to separable standard quadratic programming and appears as a substructure in potential-based network flow problems … Read more

    A Finite-Difference Trust-Region Method for Convexly Constrained Smooth Optimization

  • Dânâ Davar
  • Geovani Nunes Grapiglia
    • Categories Bound-constrained Optimization, Nonlinear Optimization Tags , , , ,

    We propose a derivative-free trust-region method based on finite-difference gradient approximations for smooth optimization problems with convex constraints. The proposed method does not require computing an approximate stationarity measure. For nonconvex problems, we establish a worst-case complexity bound of \(\mathcal{O}\!\left(n\left(\frac{L}{\sigma}\epsilon\right)^{-2}\right)\) function evaluations for the method to reach an \(\left(\frac{L}{\sigma}\epsilon\right)\)-approximate stationary point, where \(n\) is the … Read more