A Novel Unified Approach to Invariance in Control

In this paper, we propose a novel, unified, general approach to investigate sufficient and necessary conditions under which four types of convex sets, polyhedra, polyhedral cones, ellipsoids and Lorenz cones, are invariant sets for a linear continuous or discrete dynamical system. In proving invariance of ellipsoids and Lorenz cones for discrete systems, instead of the … Read more

Second-order cone programming approach for elliptically distributed joint probabilistic constraints with dependent rows

In this paper, we investigate the problem of linear joint probabilistic constraints. We assume that the rows of the constraint matrix are dependent and the dependence is driven by a convenient Archimedean copula. Further we assume the distribution of the constraint rows to be elliptically distributed, covering normal, $t$, or Laplace distributions. Under these and … Read more

Active-set prediction for interior point methods using controlled perturbations

We propose the use of controlled perturbations to address the challenging question of optimal active-set prediction for interior point methods. Namely, in the context of linear programming, we consider perturbing the inequality constraints/bounds so as to enlarge the feasible set. We show that if the perturbations are chosen appropriately, the solution of the original problem … Read more

Application of the Strictly Contractive Peaceman-Rachford Splitting Method to Multi-block Separable Convex Programming

Recently, a strictly contractive Peaceman- Rachford splitting method (SC-PRSM) was proposed to solve a convex minimization model with linear constraints and a separable objective function which is the sum of two functions without coupled variables. We show by an example that the SC-PRSM cannot be directly extended to the case where the objective function is … Read more

A Second-Order Method for Compressed Sensing Problems with Coherent and Redundant Dictionaries

In this paper we are interested in the solution of Compressed Sensing (CS) problems where the signals to be recovered are sparse in coherent and redundant dictionaries. CS problems of this type are convex with non-smooth and non-separable regularization term, therefore a specialized solver is required. We propose a primal-dual Newton Conjugate Gradients (pdNCG) method. … Read more

Spectral estimates for unreduced symmetric KKT systems arising from Interior Point methods

We consider symmetrized KKT systems arising in the solution of convex quadratic programming problems in standard form by Interior Point methods. Their coefficient matrices usually have 3×3 block structure and, under suitable conditions on both the quadratic programming problem and the solution, they are nonsingular in the limit. We present new spectral estimates for these … Read more

Toward Scalable Stochastic Unit Commitment – Part 1: Load Scenario Generation

Unit commitment decisions made in the day-ahead market and during subsequent reliability assessments are critically based on forecasts of load. Traditional, deterministic unit commitment is based on point or expectation-based load forecasts. In contrast, stochastic unit commitment relies on multiple load scenarios, with associated probabilities, that in aggregate capture the range of likely load time-series. … Read more

Toward Scalable Stochastic Unit Commitment – Part 2: Solver Configuration and Performance Assessment

In this second portion of a two-part analysis of a scalable computational approach to stochastic unit commitment, we focus on solving stochastic mixed-integer programs in tractable run-times. Our solution technique is based on Rockafellar and Wets’ progressive hedging algorithm, a scenario-based decomposition strategy for solving stochastic programs. To achieve high-quality solutions in tractable run-times, we … Read more

A mixed integer programming approach for asset protection during escaped wildfires

Incident Management Teams (IMTs) are responsible for managing the response to wildfires. One of the IMT’s objectives is the protection of assets and infrastructure. In this paper we develop a mathematical model to assist IMTs in assigning resources to asset protection activities during escaped wildfires. We present a mixed integer programming model for resource allocation … Read more

AN INEQUALITY-CONSTRAINED SQP METHOD FOR EIGENVALUE OPTIMIZATION

We consider a problem in eigenvalue optimization, in particular find- ing a local minimizer of the spectral abscissa – the value of a parameter that results in the smallest magnitude of the largest real part of the spectrum of a matrix system. This is an important problem for the stabilization of control sys- tems. Many … Read more