@inproceedings{VierhausFuegenschuhGottwaldetal., author = {Vierhaus, Ingmar and F{\"u}genschuh, Armin and Gottwald, Robert Lion and Gr{\"o}sser, Stefan}, title = {Modern Nonlinear Optimization Techniques for an Optimal Control of System Dynamics Models}, series = {Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference of the System Dynamics Society}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference of the System Dynamics Society}, abstract = {We study System Dynamics models with several free parameters that can be altered by the user. We assume that the user's goal is to achieve a certain dynamic behavior of the model by varying these parameters. In order to find best possible combination of parameter settings, several automatic parameter tuning methods are described in the literature and readily available within existing System Dynamic software packages. We give a survey on the available techniques in the market and describe their theoretical background. Some of these methods are already six decades old, and meanwhile newer and more powerful optimization methods have emerged in the mathematical literature. One major obstacle for their direct use are tabled data in System Dynamics models, which are usually interpreted as piecewise linear functions. However, modern optimization methods usually require smooth functions which are twice continuously differentiable. We overcome this problem by a smooth spline interpolation of the tabled data. We use a test set of three complex System Dynamic models from the literature, describe their individual transition into optimization problems, and demonstrate the applicability of modern optimization algorithms to these System Dynamics Optimization problems.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{GottwaldMaherShinano, author = {Gottwald, Robert Lion and Maher, Stephen J. and Shinano, Yuji}, title = {Distributed Domain Propagation}, series = {16th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2017)}, volume = {75}, booktitle = {16th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2017)}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2017.6}, pages = {6:1 -- 6:11}, abstract = {Portfolio parallelization is an approach that runs several solver instances in parallel and terminates when one of them succeeds in solving the problem. Despite its simplicity, portfolio parallelization has been shown to perform well for modern mixed-integer programming (MIP) and boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) solvers. Domain propagation has also been shown to be a simple technique in modern MIP and SAT solvers that effectively finds additional domain reductions after the domain of a variable has been reduced. In this paper we introduce distributed domain propagation, a technique that shares bound tightenings across solvers to trigger further domain propagations. We investigate its impact in modern MIP solvers that employ portfolio parallelization. Computational experiments were conducted for two implementations of this parallelization approach. While both share global variable bounds and solutions, they communicate differently. In one implementation the communication is performed only at designated points in the solving process and in the other it is performed completely asynchronously. Computational experiments show a positive performance impact of communicating global variable bounds and provide valuable insights in communication strategies for parallel solvers.}, language = {en} }