An exact solution approach for an electric bus dispatch problem

We study how to efficiently plan the daily bus dispatch operation within a public transport terminal working with a fleet of electric buses. This requires to formulate and solve a new variant of the Vehicle Scheduling Problem model, in which one has to assign trip itineraries to each vehicle considering that driving ranges are limited, … Read more

Benders decomposition for Network Design Covering Problems

We consider two covering variants of the network design problem. We are given a set of origin/destination(O/D) pairs and each such O/D pair is covered if there exists a path in the network from the origin to the destination whose length is not larger than a given threshold. In the first problem, called the maximal … Read more

A Framework for Generalized Benders’ Decomposition and Its Application to Multilevel Optimization

We describe an algorithmic framework generalizing the well-known framework originally introduced by Benders. We apply this framework to several classes of optimization problems that fall under the broad umbrella of multilevel/multistage mixed integer linear optimization problems. The development of the abstract framework and its application to this broad class of problems provides new insights and … Read more

Submodular maximization of concave utility functions composed with a set-union operator with applications to maximal covering location problems

We study a family of discrete optimization problems asking for the maximization of the expected value of a concave, strictly increasing, and differentiable function composed with a set-union operator. The expected value is computed with respect to a set of coefficients taking values from a discrete set of scenarios. The function models the utility function … Read more

An Exact Solution Method for the TSP with Drone Based on Decomposition

The Traveling Salesperson Problem with Drone (TSP–D) is a routing model in which a given set of customer locations must be visited in the least amount of time, either by a truck route starting and ending at a depot or by a drone dispatched from the truck en route. We study the TSP–D model and … Read more

The SCIP Optimization Suite 7.0

The SCIP Optimization Suite provides a collection of software packages for mathematical optimization centered around the constraint integer programming framework SCIP. This paper discusses enhancements and extensions contained in version 7.0 of the SCIP Optimization Suite. The new version features the parallel presolving library PaPILO as a new addition to the suite. PaPILO 1.0 simplifies … Read more

The Star Degree Centrality Problem: A Decomposition Approach

We consider the problem of identifying the induced star with the largest cardinality open neighborhood in a graph. This problem, also known as the star degree centrality (SDC) problem, has been shown to be 𝒩𝒫-complete. In this work, we first propose a new integer programming (IP) formulation, which has a fewer number of constraints and … Read more

Learning Optimal Classification Trees: Strong Max-Flow Formulations

We consider the problem of learning optimal binary classification trees. Literature on the topic has burgeoned in recent years, motivated both by the empirical suboptimality of heuristic approaches and the tremendous improvements in mixed-integer programming (MIP) technology. Yet, existing approaches from the literature do not leverage the power of MIP to its full extent. Indeed, … Read more

The Impact of Neighboring Markets on Renewable Locations, Transmission Expansion, and Generation Investment

Many long-term investment planning models for liberalized electricity markets either optimize for the entire electricity system or focus on confined jurisdictions, abstracting from adjacent markets. In this paper, we provide models for analyzing the impact of the interdependencies between a core electricity market and its neighboring markets on key long-run decisions. This we do both … Read more

Single Allocation Hub Location with Heterogeneous Economies of Scale

We study the single allocation hub location problem with heterogeneous economies of scale (SAHLP-h). The SAHLP-h is a generalization of the classical single allocation hub location problem (SAHLP), in which the hub-hub connection costs are piecewise linear functions of the amounts of flow. We model the problem as an integer non-linear program, which we then … Read more