We study robust network enhancement problems that improve network performance through component upgrades, where both network utilities and enhancement costs are uncertain. We consider two formulations: a lower-bound problem that improves the minimum utility across feasible network structures and an upper-bound problem that improves the maximum utility. For the lower-bound problem, we develop an exact … Read more
We propose robust and distributionally robust formulations of the risk budgeting problem under the mean absolute deviation (MAD) risk measure. The proposed models address uncertainty in asset returns and their distribution while allocating portfolio risk according to prescribed risk budgets. We first develop a robust model in which historical return observations are perturbed within a … Read more
Distributionally robust optimization hedges a decision against an ambiguity set of candidate distributions. In a cold-start setting the target distribution is unobserved and no sample from it is available, so only related source distributions provide evidence for constructing that set. We propose an inclusive-exclusive Wasserstein ball model that jointly learns a center and radius from … Read more
We study robust optimization problems with decision-dependent information discovery under polyhedral uncertainty and continuous recourse. We first establish structural properties of the resulting min–max–min problem, including existence of solutions and a condition under which information discovery has no value. Then, we develop a heuristic approach that combines affine decision rules with scenario generation and show … Read more
We study stochastic optimization with a completely unobserved target distribution and samples from related source distributions. Treating the sources and the target as independent draws from a common meta-distribution, we propose Wasserstein-metric meta-distribution support learning (MDSL). The model jointly learns the center and radius of a Wasserstein ball, with an exclusion parameter controlling the fraction … Read more
Classical budget uncertainty is widely used in robust optimization. It bounds the aggregate absolute deviation of uncertain parameters from nominal values and yields tractable robust counterparts. In many applications, however, information concerns aggregate signed deviations. We therefore study signed budget uncertainty, in which bounds are imposed on signed aggregates rather than absolute deviations. For robust … Read more
We propose an algorithmic framework for solving adaptive robust optimization with provable guarantees on both tractability and solution accuracy. The framework introduces soft separation, a probabilistic mechanism for identifying worst-case uncertainty realizations via a time-inhomogeneous Markov chain. Rather than solving an exact separation problem in each iteration, which is intractable in general, the chain carries … Read more
Classical robust optimization relies on convex and bounded uncertainty sets, an assumption that is inadequate for sparse uncertainty, where only a small, unknown subset of parameters deviates from its nominal value. This sparsity makes the uncertainty set nonconvex and turns separation into a combinatorial problem, so standard duality-based reformulations do not apply. We study two … Read more
Realistic decision problems are inherently multiobjective and uncertain. To manage both of these complexities, robust multiobjective optimization strives to aid the decision maker in finding a decision which is Pareto efficient and is hedged against the worst-case scenario. In this paper, we present a robustness approach which is grounded in the decision maker’s preferences by … Read more
Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization (DRO) is a versatile and widely adopted framework for decision-making under uncertainty, yet its standard deterministic reformulations generally contain non-convex inner subproblems that are challenging to solve. To address this issue, we propose a shrinkage path heuristic that reduces the solution of a DRO problem to a one-dimensional search over the … Read more