TY - JOUR A1 - Maher, Stephen J. T1 - A novel passenger recovery approach for the integrated airline recovery problem JF - Computers & Operations Research N2 - Schedule disruptions require airlines to intervene through the process of recovery; this involves modifications to the planned schedule, aircraft routings, crew pairings and passenger itineraries. Passenger recovery is generally considered as the final stage in this process, and hence passengers experience unnecessarily large impacts resulting from flight delays and cancellations. Most recovery approaches considering passengers involve a separately defined module within the problem formulation. However, this approach may be overly complex for recovery in many aviation and general transportation applications. This paper presents a unique description of the cancellation variables that models passenger recovery by prescribing the alternative travel arrangements for passengers in the event of flight cancellations. The results will demonstrate that this simple, but effective, passenger recovery approach significantly reduces the operational costs of the airline and increases passenger flow through the network. The integrated airline recovery problem with passenger reallocation is solved using column-and-row generation to achieve high quality solutions in short runtimes. An analysis of the column-and-row generation solution approach is performed, identifying a number of enhancement techniques to further improve the solution runtimes. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2014.11.005 VL - 57 SP - 123 EP - 137 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Humpola, Jesco T1 - A Unified View on Relaxations for a Nonlinear Network Flow Problem N2 - We consider a nonlinear nonconvex network flow problem that arises, for example, in natural gas or water transmission networks. Given is such network with active and passive components, that is, valves, compressors, pressure regulators (active) and pipelines (passive), and a desired amount of flow at certain specified entry and exit nodes of the network. Besides flow conservation constraints in the nodes the flow must fulfill nonlinear nonconvex pressure loss constraints on the arcs subject to potential values (i.e., pressure levels) in both end nodes of each arc. The problem is how to numerically compute this flow and pressures. We review an existing approach of Maugis (1977) and extend it to the case of networks with active elements (for example, compressors). We further examine different ways of relaxations for the nonlinear network flow model. We compare different approaches based on nonlinear optimization numerically on a set of test instances. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-31 KW - Nonlinear Network Flow KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Relaxations Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-18857 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Masing, Berenike A1 - Liebchen, Christian T1 - Integrierte Baufahrplanoptimierung auf dem Netz der S-Bahn Berlin T2 - HEUREKA'24 - Optimierung in Verkehr und Transport N2 - Zur Instandhaltung von Eisenbahnnetzen sind regelmäßig Baumaßnahmen erforderlich. Diese erfordern stets Anpassungen der Fahrpläne. Um den Fahrgästen trotz der Baumaßnahme weiterhin einen möglichst großen Teil des Regelangebotes bieten zu können, bewegen sich die resultierenden Baufahrpläne insbesondere in Schnellbahnnetzen mit ihren dichten Zugfolgen häufig nahe der Kapazitätsgrenze der Infrastruktur. Etablierte Verfahren zur Taktfahrplanoptimierung können diesen Anforderungen nicht genügen, da in der Praxis Anpassungen von Laufwegen der Linien, sowie der Gleisbelegungen häufig Teil der realisierten Lösungen sind. Für diese Aufgabe haben die Autoren zuletzt ein Optimierungsmodell vorgestellt, welches diese Möglichkeiten ausschöpft. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird erstmalig dessen Anwendung auf ein unmittelbar der Praxis der Baufahrplanung entnommenes Beispiel aus dem Netz der Berliner S-Bahn im Detail beschrieben. Y1 - 2024 VL - 002/140 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - SAT-Generated Initial Solutions for Integrated Line Planning and Turn-Sensitive Periodic Timetabling with Track Choice T2 - hEART 2024: 12th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation N2 - Periodic timetabling is a challenging planning task in public transport. As safety requirements are crucial, track allocation is indispensable for validating the practical feasibility of a railway timetable. For busy stations with limited capacities, this requires a detailed planning of turn-arounds. It is therefore desirable to integrate timetabling not only with track allocation, but also with vehicle scheduling and line planning. This is captured by the Integrated Line Planning and Turn-Sensitive Periodic Timetabling Problem with Track Choice, whose MIP formulation has been demonstrated to be effective for construction site railway rescheduling, as long as a good quality initial solution is available. In this paper, we discuss how to generate such a solution by extending the SAT formulation of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem with track choice, track occupation, and minimum service frequency components. The SAT approach is superior to pure MIP on real-world instances of the S-Bahn Berlin network. KW - Periodic Timetabling KW - Railway Timetabling KW - Railway Track Allocation KW - Boolean Satisfiability Problem KW - Rescheduling KW - Line Planning Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-98066 UR - https://transp-or.epfl.ch/heart/2024/abstracts/hEART_2024_paper_3685.pdf ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Liebchen, Christian A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - Forward Cycle Bases and Periodic Timetabling T2 - 21st Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2021) N2 - Periodic timetable optimization problems in public transport can be modeled as mixed-integer linear programs by means of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP). In order to keep the branch-and-bound tree small, minimum integral cycle bases have been proven successful. We examine forward cycle bases, where no cycle is allowed to contain a backward arc. After reviewing the theory of these bases, we describe the construction of an integral forward cycle basis on a line-based event-activity network. Adding turnarounds to the instance R1L1 of the benchmark library PESPlib, we computationally evaluate three types of forward cycle bases in the Pareto sense, and come up with significant improvements concerning dual bounds. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2021.2 VL - 96 SP - 2:1 EP - 2:14 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin T1 - A New Class of Valid Inequalities for Nonlinear Network Design Problems N2 - We consider a nonlinear nonconvex network design problem that arises in the extension of natural gas transmission networks. Given is such network with active and passive components, that is, valves, compressors, pressure regulators (active) and pipelines (passive), and a desired amount of flow at certain specified entry and exit nodes of the network. Besides flow conservation constraints in the nodes the flow must fulfill nonlinear nonconvex pressure loss constraints on the arcs subject to potential values (i.e., pressure levels) in both end nodes of each arc. Assume that there does not exist a feasible flow that fulfills all physical constraints and meets the desired entry and exit amounts. Then a natural question is where to extend the network by adding pipes in the most economic way such that this flow becomes feasible. Answering this question is computationally demanding because of the difficult problem structure. We use mixed-integer nonlinear programming techniques that rely on an outer approximation of the overall problem, and a branching on decision variables. We formulate a new class of valid inequalities (or cutting planes) which reduce the overall solution time when added to the formulation. We demonstrate the computational merits of our approach on test instances. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-06 KW - Network Design KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming KW - Cutting Planes Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-17771 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Liebchen, Christian A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - Forward Cycle Bases and Periodic Timetabling N2 - Periodic timetable optimization problems in public transport can be modeled as mixed-integer linear programs by means of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP). In order to keep the branch-and-bound tree small, minimum integral cycle bases have been proven successful. We examine forward cycle bases, where no cycle is allowed to contain a backward arc. After reviewing the theory of these bases, we describe the construction of an integral forward cycle basis on a line-based event-activity network. Adding turnarounds to the instance \texttt{R1L1} of the benchmark library PESPlib, we computationally evaluate three types of forward cycle bases in the Pareto sense, and come up with significant improvements concerning dual bounds. T3 - ZIB-Report - 21-18 KW - Periodic Timetabling KW - Cycle Bases KW - Mixed Integer Programming Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-82756 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Maristany de las Casas, Pedro A1 - Schiewe, Philine T1 - Optimal Forks: Preprocessing Single-Source Shortest Path Instances with Interval Data N2 - We investigate preprocessing for single-source shortest path queries in digraphs, where arc costs are only known to lie in an interval. More precisely, we want to decide for each arc whether it is part of some shortest path tree for some realization of costs. We show that this problem is solvable in polynomial time by giving a combinatorial algorithm, using optimal structures that we call forks. Our algorithm turns out to be very efficient in practice, and is sometimes even superior in quality to a heuristic developed for the one-to-one shortest path problem in the context of passenger routing in public transport. T3 - ZIB-Report - 21-17 KW - Preprocessing Shortest Path Problems KW - Interval Data KW - Graph Algorithms Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-82716 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - van Lieshout, Rolf T1 - Benders Decomposition for the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem N2 - The Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) is the central mathematical model behind the optimization of periodic timetables in public transport. We apply Benders decomposition to the incidence-based MIP formulation of PESP. The resulting formulation exhibits particularly nice features: The subproblem is a minimum cost network flow problem, and feasibility cuts are equivalent to the well-known cycle inequalities by Odijk. We integrate the Benders approach into a branch-and-cut framework, and assess the performance of this method on instances derived from the benchmarking library PESPlib. T3 - ZIB-Report - 21-29 KW - Periodic Timetabling KW - Periodic Event Scheduling Problem KW - Benders Decomposition KW - Mixed-Integer Programming Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-83338 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Maristany de las Casas, Pedro A1 - Schiewe, Philine T1 - Optimal Forks: Preprocessing Single-Source Shortest Path Instances with Interval Data T2 - 21st Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2021) N2 - We investigate preprocessing for single-source shortest path queries in digraphs, where arc costs are only known to lie in an interval. More precisely, we want to decide for each arc whether it is part of some shortest path tree for some realization of costs. We show that this problem is solvable in polynomial time by giving a combinatorial algorithm, using optimal structures that we call forks. Our algorithm turns out to be very efficient in practice, and is sometimes even superior in quality to a heuristic developed for the one-to-one shortest path problem in the context of passenger routing in public transport. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2021.7 VL - 96 SP - 7:1 EP - 7:15 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Geißler, Björn A1 - Gollmer, Ralf A1 - Hayn, Christine A1 - Henrion, Rene A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Mirkov, Radoslava A1 - Morsi, Antonio A1 - Römisch, Werner A1 - Rövekamp, Jessica A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Schultz, Rüdiger A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Stangl, Claudia A1 - Steinbach, Marc A1 - Willert, Bernhard T1 - Mathematical Optimization for Challenging Network Planning Problems in Unbundled Liberalized Gas Markets N2 - The recently imposed new gas market liberalization rules in Germany lead to a change of business of gas network operators. While previously network operator and gas vendor where united, they were forced to split up into independent companies. The network has to be open to any other gas trader at the same conditions, and free network capacities have to be identified and publicly offered in a non-discriminatory way. We show that these new paradigms lead to new and challenging mathematical optimization problems. In order to solve them and to provide meaningful results for practice, all aspects of the underlying problems, such as combinatorics, stochasticity, uncertainty, and nonlinearity, have to be addressed. With such special-tailored solvers, free network capacities and topological network extensions can, for instance, be determined. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-13 KW - Gas Market Liberalization KW - Entry-Exit Model KW - Gas Network Access Regulation KW - Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-17821 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ebert, Patricia A1 - Masing, Berenike A1 - Lindner, Niels A1 - Gleixner, Ambros T1 - Sorting Criteria for Line-based Periodic Timetabling Heuristics N2 - It is well-known that optimal solutions are notoriously hard to find for the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP), which is the standard mathematical formulation to optimize periodic timetables in public transport. We consider a class of incremental heuristics that have been demonstrated to be effective by Lindner and Liebchen (2023), however, for only one fixed sorting strategy of lines along which a solution is constructed. Thus, in this paper, we examine a variety of sortings based on the number, weight, weighted span, and lower bound of arcs, and test for each setting various combinations of the driving, dwelling, and transfer arcs of lines. Additionally, we assess the impact on the incremental extension of the event-activity network by minimizing resp. maximizing a connectivity measure between subsets of lines. We compare our 27 sortings on the railway instances of the benchmarking library PESPlib within the ConcurrentPESP solver framework. We are able to find five new incumbent solutions, resulting in improvements of up to 2%. T3 - ZIB-Report - 24-07 KW - Public Transport KW - Timetabling KW - Periodic Event Scheduling Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-97826 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bortoletto, Enrico A1 - van Lieshout, Rolf Nelson A1 - Masing, Berenike A1 - Lindner, Niels T1 - Periodic Event Scheduling with Flexible Infrastructure Assignment T2 - 24th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2024) N2 - We present novel extensions of the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) that integrate the assignment of activities to infrastructure elements. An application of this is railway timetabling, as station and platform capacities are limited and need to be taken into account. We show that an assignment of activities to platforms can always be made periodic, and that it can be beneficial to allow larger periods for the assignment than for the timetable. We present mixed-integer programming formulations for the general problem, as well as for the practically relevant case when multiple platforms can be considered equivalent, for which we present a bipartite matching approach. We finally test and compare these models on real-world instances. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2024.4 VL - 123 SP - 4:1 EP - 4:18 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Pfetsch, Marc A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Geißler, Björn A1 - Geißler, Nina A1 - Gollmer, Ralf A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Morsi, Antonio A1 - Rövekamp, Jessica A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Schultz, Rüdiger A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas A1 - Stangl, Claudia A1 - Steinbach, Marc A1 - Vigerske, Stefan A1 - Willert, Bernhard T1 - Validation of Nominations in Gas Network Optimization: Models, Methods, and Solutions N2 - In this article we investigate methods to solve a fundamental task in gas transportation, namely the validation of nomination problem: Given a gas transmission network consisting of passive pipelines and active, controllable elements and given an amount of gas at every entry and exit point of the network, find operational settings for all active elements such that there exists a network state meeting all physical, technical, and legal constraints. We describe a two-stage approach to solve the resulting complex and numerically difficult mixed-integer non-convex nonlinear feasibility problem. The first phase consists of four distinct algorithms facilitating mixed-integer linear, mixed-integer nonlinear, reduced nonlinear, and complementarity constrained methods to compute possible settings for the discrete decisions. The second phase employs a precise continuous nonlinear programming model of the gas network. Using this setup, we are able to compute high quality solutions to real-world industrial instances whose size is significantly larger than networks that have appeared in the literature previously. T3 - ZIB-Report - 12-41 Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-16531 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schulz, Christof A1 - Swarat, Elmar A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Duty Rostering in Public Transport - Facing Preferences, Fairness, and Fatigue N2 - Duty rostering problems occur in different application contexts and come in different flavors. They give rise to very large scale integer programs which ypically have lots of solutions and extremely fractional LP relaxations. In such a situation, heuristics can be a viable algorithmic choice. We propose an mprovement method of the Lin-Kernighan type for the solution of duty rostering problems. We illustrate its versatility and solution quality on three different applications in public transit, vehicle routing, and airline rostering with a focus on the management of preferences, fairness, and fatigue, respectively. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-44 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56070 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Maher, Stephen J. A1 - Miltenberger, Matthias A1 - Pedroso, João Pedro A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Serrano, Felipe T1 - PySCIPOpt: Mathematical Programming in Python with the SCIP Optimization Suite N2 - SCIP is a solver for a wide variety of mathematical optimization problems. It is written in C and extendable due to its plug-in based design. However, dealing with all C specifics when extending SCIP can be detrimental to development and testing of new ideas. This paper attempts to provide a remedy by introducing PySCIPOpt, a Python interface to SCIP that enables users to write new SCIP code entirely in Python. We demonstrate how to intuitively model mixed-integer linear and quadratic optimization problems and moreover provide examples on how new Python plug-ins can be added to SCIP. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-64 KW - SCIP, Mathematical optimization, Python, Modeling Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61348 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel T1 - A Hypergraph Network Simplex Algorithm N2 - We describe a network simplex algorithm for the minimum cost flow problem on graph-based hypergraphs which are directed hypergraphs of a particular form occurring in railway rotation planning. The algorithm is based on work of Cambini, Gallo, and Scutellà who developed a hypergraphic generalization of the network simplex algorithm. Their main theoretical result is the characterization of basis matrices. We give a similar characterization for graph-based hypergraphs and show that some operations of the simplex algorithm can be done combinatorially by exploiting the underlying digraph structure. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-36 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64539 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - A Propagation Approach to Acyclic Rolling Stock Rotation Optimization T2 - Proceedings of the IAROR conference RailLille N2 - The rolling stock, i.e., railway vehicles, are one of the key ingredients of a running railway system. As it is well known, the offer of a railway company to their customers, i.e., the railway timetable, changes from time to time. Typical reasons for that are different timetables associated with different seasons, maintenance periods or holidays. Therefore, the regular lifetime of a timetable is split into (more or less) irregular periods where parts of the timetable are changed. In order to operate a railway timetable most railway companies set up sequences that define the operation of timetabled trips by a single physical railway vehicle called (rolling stock) rotations. Not surprisingly, the individual parts of a timetable also affect the rotations. More precisely, each of the parts brings up an acyclic rolling stock rotation problem with start and end conditions associated with the beginning and ending of the corresponding period. In this paper, we propose a propagation approach to deal with large planning horizons that are composed of many timetables with shorter individual lifetimes. The approach is based on an integer linear programming formulation that propagates rolling stock rotations through the irregular parts of the timetable while taking a large variety of operational requirements into account. This approach is implemented within the rolling stock rotation optimization framework ROTOR used by DB Fernverkehr AG, one of the leading railway operators in Europe. Computational results for real world scenarios are presented to evaluate the approach. Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gleixner, Ambros A1 - Maher, Stephen A1 - Müller, Benjamin A1 - Pedroso, João Pedro T1 - Price-and-verify: a new algorithm for recursive circle packing using Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition JF - Annals of Operations Research N2 - Packing rings into a minimum number of rectangles is an optimization problem which appears naturally in the logistics operations of the tube industry. It encompasses two major difficulties, namely the positioning of rings in rectangles and the recursive packing of rings into other rings. This problem is known as the Recursive Circle Packing Problem (RCPP). We present the first dedicated method for solving RCPP that provides strong dual bounds based on an exact Dantzig–Wolfe reformulation of a nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming formulation. The key idea of this reformulation is to break symmetry on each recursion level by enumerating one-level packings, i.e., packings of circles into other circles, and by dynamically generating packings of circles into rectangles. We use column generation techniques to design a “price-and-verify” algorithm that solves this reformulation to global optimality. Extensive computational experiments on a large test set show that our method not only computes tight dual bounds, but often produces primal solutions better than those computed by heuristics from the literature. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-3115-5 VL - 284 IS - 2 SP - 527 EP - 555 PB - Springer US ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Scheidweiler, Robert T1 - Perfect f-Matchings and f-Factors in Hypergraphs - A Combinatorial Approach JF - Discrete Mathematics N2 - We prove characterizations of the existence of perfect f-matchings in uniform mengerian and perfect hypergraphs. Moreover, we investigate the f-factor problem in balanced hypergraphs. For uniform balanced hypergraphs we prove two existence theorems with purely combinatorial arguments, whereas for non-uniform balanced hypergraphs we show that the f-factor problem is NP-hard. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disc.2017.05.005 VL - 340 IS - 10 SP - 2499 EP - 2506 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Maher, Stephen J. A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Shinano, Yuji T1 - SCIP-Jack – A solver for STP and variants with parallelization extensions N2 - The Steiner tree problem in graphs is a classical problem that commonly arises in practical applications as one of many variants. While often a strong relationship between different Steiner tree problem variants can be observed, solution approaches employed so far have been prevalently problem-specific. In contrast, this paper introduces a general-purpose solver that can be used to solve both the classical Steiner tree problem and many of its variants without modification. This versatility is achieved by transforming various problem variants into a general form and solving them by using a state-of-the-art MIP-framework. The result is a high-performance solver that can be employed in massively parallel environments and is capable of solving previously unsolved instances. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-41 KW - Steiner tree problem KW - SCIP-Jack KW - Steiner tree variants KW - maximum-weight connected subgraph KW - prize-collecting Steiner tree Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-60170 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Transformations for the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree Problem and the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem to SAP N2 - Transformations of Steiner tree problem variants have been frequently discussed in the literature. Besides allowing to easily transfer complexity results, they constitute a central pillar of exact state-of-the-art solvers for well-known variants such as the Steiner tree problem in graphs. In this paper transformations for both the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem and the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem to the Steiner arborescence problem are introduced for the first time. Furthermore, we demonstrate the considerable implications for practical solving approaches, including the computation of strong upper and lower bounds. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-36 KW - graph transformation KW - Steiner tree problems KW - prize-collecting Steiner tree problem KW - maximum-weight connected subgraph problem Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-59777 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Blanco, Marco A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Hoang, Nam-Dung A1 - Kaier, Anton A1 - Schienle, Adam A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schlobach, Swen ED - Marc, Goerigk T1 - Solving Time Dependent Shortest Path Problems on Airway Networks Using Super-Optimal Wind T2 - 16th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2016) N2 - We study the Flight Planning Problem for a single aircraft, which deals with finding a path of minimal travel time in an airway network. Flight time along arcs is affected by wind speed and direction, which are functions of time. We consider three variants of the problem, which can be modeled as, respectively, a classical shortest path problem in a metric space, a time-dependent shortest path problem with piecewise linear travel time functions, and a time-dependent shortest path problem with piecewise differentiable travel time functions. The shortest path problem and its time-dependent variant have been extensively studied, in particular, for road networks. Airway networks, however, have different characteristics: the average node degree is higher and shortest paths usually have only few arcs. We propose A* algorithms for each of the problem variants. In particular, for the third problem, we introduce an application-specific "super-optimal wind" potential function that overestimates optimal wind conditions on each arc, and establish a linear error bound. We compare the performance of our methods with the standard Dijkstra algorithm and the Contraction Hierarchies (CHs) algorithm. Our computational results on real world instances show that CHs do not perform as well as on road networks. On the other hand, A* guided by our potentials yields very good results. In particular, for the case of piecewise linear travel time functions, we achieve query times about 15 times shorter than CHs. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2016.12 VL - 54 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schenker, Sebastian A1 - Skutella, Martin A1 - Strunk, Timo ED - Greuel, G.-M. ED - Koch, Thorsten ED - Paule, Peter ED - Sommese, Andrew T1 - PolySCIP T2 - Mathematical Software – ICMS 2016, 5th International Conference, Berlin, Germany, July 11-14, 2016, Proceedings N2 - PolySCIP is a new solver for multi-criteria integer and multi-criteria linear programs handling an arbitrary number of objectives. It is available as an official part of the non-commercial constraint integer programming framework SCIP. It utilizes a lifted weight space approach to compute the set of supported extreme non-dominated points and unbounded non-dominated rays, respectively. The algorithmic approach can be summarized as follows: At the beginning an arbitrary non-dominated point is computed (or it is determined that there is none) and a weight space polyhedron created. In every next iteration a vertex of the weight space polyhedron is selected whose entries give rise to a single-objective optimization problem via a combination of the original objectives. If the ptimization of this single-objective problem yields a new non-dominated point, the weight space polyhedron is updated. Otherwise another vertex of the weight space polyhedron is investigated. The algorithm finishes when all vertices of the weight space polyhedron have been investigated. The file format of PolySCIP is based on the widely used MPS format and allows a simple generation of multi-criteria models via an algebraic modelling language. Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-42431-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42432-3_32 VL - 9725 SP - 259 EP - 264 PB - Springer International Publishing ET - Mathematical Software – ICMS 2016 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Serrano, Felipe T1 - Sufficient pruning conditions for MINLP in gas network design JF - EURO Journal on Computational Optimization N2 - One-quarter of Europe’s energy demand is provided by natural gas distributed through a vast pipeline network covering the whole of Europe. At a cost of 1 million Euros per kilometer the extension of the European pipeline network is already a multi-billion Euro business. Therefore, automatic planning tools that support the decision process are desired. We model the topology optimization problem in gas networks by a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). This gives rise to a so-called active transmission problem, a continuous nonlinear non-convex feasibility problem which emerges from the MINLP model by fixing all integral variables. We offer novel sufficient conditions for proving the infeasibility of this active transmission problem. These conditions can be expressed in the form of a mixed-integer program (MILP), i.e., the infeasibility of a non-convex continuous nonlinear program (NLP) can be certified by solving an MILP. This result provides an efficient pruning procedure in a branch-and-bound algorithm. Our computational results demonstrate a substantial speedup for the necessary computations. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13675-016-0077-8 VL - 5 IS - 1-2 SP - 239 EP - 261 PB - Springer Berlin Heidelberg ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fischer, Frank A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Comparing two dual relaxations of large scale train timetabling problems N2 - Railway transportation and in particular train timetabling is one of the basic and source application areas of combinatorial optimization and integer programming. We will discuss two well established modeling techniques for the train timetabling problem. In this paper we focus on one major ingredient - the bounding by dual relaxations. We compare two classical dual relaxations of large scale time expanded train timetabling problems - the Lagrangean Dual and Lagrangean Decomposition. We discuss the convergence behavior and show limitations of the Lagrangean Decomposition approach for a configuration based model. We introduce a third dualization approach to overcome those limitations. Finally, we present promising preliminary computational experiments that show that our new approach indeed has superior convergence properties. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-43 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56068 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Gotzes, Uwe A1 - Heinecke, Nina A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Rövekamp, Jessica A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Regulatory rules for gas markets in Germany and other European countries T2 - Evaluating gas network capacities Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-1-611973-68-6 SP - 45 EP - 64 PB - Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics ER - TY - GEN A1 - Breuer, Thomas A1 - Bussieck, Michael A1 - Cao, Karl-Kien A1 - Cebulla, Felix A1 - Fiand, Frederik A1 - Gils, Hans Christian A1 - Gleixner, Ambros A1 - Khabi, Dmitry A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Wetzel, Manuel T1 - Optimizing Large-Scale Linear Energy System Problems with Block Diagonal Structure by Using Parallel Interior-Point Methods N2 - Current linear energy system models (ESM) acquiring to provide sufficient detail and reliability frequently bring along problems of both high intricacy and increasing scale. Unfortunately, the size and complexity of these problems often prove to be intractable even for commercial state-of-the-art linear programming solvers. This article describes an interdisciplinary approach to exploit the intrinsic structure of these large-scale linear problems to be able to solve them on massively parallel high-performance computers. A key aspect are extensions to the parallel interior-point solver PIPS-IPM originally developed for stochastic optimization problems. Furthermore, a newly developed GAMS interface to the solver as well as some GAMS language extensions to model block-structured problems will be described. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-75 KW - energy system models KW - interior-point methods KW - high-performance computing Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-66183 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Breuer, Matthias A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Timetable Sparsification by Rolling Stock Rotation Optimization N2 - Rolling stock optimization is a task that naturally arises by operating a railway system. It could be seen with different level of details. From a strategic perspective to have a rough plan which types of fleets to be bought to a more operational perspective to decide which coaches have to be maintained first. This paper presents a new approach to deal with rolling stock optimisation in case of a (long term) strike. Instead of constructing a completely new timetable for the strike period, we propose a mixed integer programming model that is able to choose appropriate trips from a given timetable to construct efficient tours of railway vehicles covering an optimized subset of trips, in terms of deadhead kilometers and importance of the trips. The decision which trip is preferred over the other is made by a simple evaluation method that is deduced from the network and trip defining data. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-63 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-65948 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - SCIP-Jack—a solver for STP and variants with parallelization extensions: An update N2 - The Steiner tree problem in graphs is a classical problem that commonly arises in practical applications as one of many variants. Although the different Steiner tree problem variants are usually strongly related, solution approaches employed so far have been prevalently problem-specific. Against this backdrop, the solver SCIP-Jack was created as a general-purpose framework that can be used to solve the classical Steiner tree problem and 11 of its variants. This versatility is achieved by transforming various problem variants into a general form and solving them by using a state-of-the-art MIP-framework. Furthermore, SCIP-Jack includes various newly developed algorithmic components such as preprocessing routines and heuristics. The result is a high-performance solver that can be employed in massively parallel environments and is capable of solving previously unsolved instances. After the introduction of SCIP-Jack at the 2014 DIMACS Challenge on Steiner problems, the overall performance of the solver has considerably improved. This article provides an overview on the current state. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-05 Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-66416 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Walther, Tom A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Saitenmacher, René T1 - Polyhedral 3D Models for compressors in gas networks N2 - Compressor machines are crucial elements in a gas transmission network, required to compensate for the pressure loss caused by friction in the pipes. Modelling all physical and technical details of a compressor machine involves a large amount of nonlinearity, which makes it hard to use such models in the optimization of large-scale gas networks. In this paper, we are going to describe a modelling approach for the operating range of a compressor machine, starting from a physical reference model and resulting in a polyhedral representation in the 3D space of mass flow throughput as well as in- and outlet pressure. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-66 KW - gas compressor modeling, polyhedral model, accuracy, z factor Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-65864 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - THES A1 - Schweiger, Jonas T1 - Exploiting structure in non-convex quadratic optimization and gas network planning under uncertainty N2 - The amazing success of computational mathematical optimization over the last decades has been driven more by insights into mathematical structures than by the advance of computing technology. In this vein, we address applications, where nonconvexity in the model and uncertainty in the data pose principal difficulties. The first part of the thesis deals with non-convex quadratic programs. Branch&Bound methods for this problem class depend on tight relaxations. We contribute in several ways: First, we establish a new way to handle missing linearization variables in the well-known Reformulation-Linearization-Technique (RLT). This is implemented into the commercial software CPLEX. Second, we study the optimization of a quadratic objective over the standard simplex or a knapsack constraint. These basic structures appear as part of many complex models. Exploiting connections to the maximum clique problem and RLT, we derive new valid inequalities. Using exact and heuristic separation methods, we demonstrate the impact of the new inequalities on the relaxation and the global optimization of these problems. Third, we strengthen the state-of-the-art relaxation for the pooling problem, a well-known non-convex quadratic problem, which is, for example, relevant in the petrochemical industry. We propose a novel relaxation that captures the essential non-convex structure of the problem but is small enough for an in-depth study. We provide a complete inner description in terms of the extreme points as well as an outer description in terms of inequalities defining its convex hull (which is not a polyhedron). We show that the resulting valid convex inequalities significantly strengthen the standard relaxation of the pooling problem. The second part of this thesis focuses on a common challenge in real world applications, namely, the uncertainty entailed in the input data. We study the extension of a gas transport network, e.g., from our project partner Open Grid Europe GmbH. For a single scenario this maps to a challenging non-convex MINLP. As the future transport patterns are highly uncertain, we propose a robust model to best prepare the network operator for an array of scenarios. We develop a custom decomposition approach that makes use of the hierarchical structure of network extensions and the loose coupling between the scenarios. The algorithm used the single-scenario problem as black-box subproblem allowing the generalization of our approach to problems with the same structure. The scenario-expanded version of this problem is out of reach for today's general-purpose MINLP solvers. Yet our approach provides primal and dual bounds for instances with up to 256 scenarios and solves many of them to optimality. Extensive computational studies show the impact of our work. N2 - Der bemerkenswerte Erfolg der angewandten mathematischen Optimierung in den letzten Dekaden ist mehr auf Einsichten in mathematische Strukturen zurückzuführen, als auf eine Steigerung der Rechenleistung. In diesem Sinne adressieren wir Anwendungen, in denen Nichtkonvexität und Unsicherheit in den Daten die Hauptschwierigkeiten darstellen. Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit nichtkonvexen quadratischen Optimierungsproblemen. Relaxierungen sind integraler Bestandteil von \BranchAndBound{}-Lösungsmethoden für diese Problemkategorie. Wir leisten folgende Beiträge: Erstens beschreiben wir eine neue Art fehlende Linearisierungsvariablen, in der so genannten Reformulation-Linearization-Technique (RLT), zu behandeln. Diese wird inzwischen in der kommerziellen Software CPLEX verwendet. Zweitens beschäftigen wir uns mit der Optimierung einer quadratischen Zielfunktion über die Standardsimplex oder einen so genannten Knapsack-Constraint. Solche grundlegenden Strukturen sind Teil vieler komplexer Modelle. Wir benutzen bekannte Verbindungen zum maximalen Cliquenproblem sowie zu RLT, um neue gültige Ungleichungen herzuleiten, die die Relaxierung verstärken. Drittens beschäftigen wir uns mit dem Pooling Problem, das z.B. in der Erdölindustrie relevant ist. Wie leiten eine neue Relaxierung her, die die wesentliche nicht-konvexe Struktur des Problems erfasst, aber klein genug für eine grundlegende Untersuchung ist. Wir geben eine innere Beschreibung in Form der Extrempunkte, sowie eine äußere Beschreibung in Form von Ungleichungen, die die konvexe Hülle (welche im Allgemeinen kein Polyeder ist) beschreiben, an. Wir zeigen, dass neuen die Ungleichungen die Relaxierung des Pooling Problems erheblich verstärken. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit befasst sich mit einer weiteren Herausforderung in realen Anwendungen, nämlich Unsicherheit in den Eingabedaten. Konkret untersuchen wir die Optimierung des Ausbaus eines Gastransportnetzes, wie z.B. von unserem Projektpartner Open Grid Europe GmbH. Dieses Problem ist bereits bei gegebenen Eingabedaten ein schweres nicht-konvexes gemischt-ganzzahliges Optimierungsproblem. Da zukünftige Nutzungsmuster des Netzes mit großer Unsicherheit behaftet sind, beschreiben wir ein robustes Modell, um den Netzbetreiber gegen verschiedene Szenarien abzusichern. Wir entwickeln einen speziellen Dekompositionsalgorithmus unter Berücksichtigung der hierarchischen Struktur der Ausbauten und der schwachen Kopplung zwischen den Szenarien. Unser Ansatz liefert primale und duale Schranken für Instanzen mit bis zu 256 Szenarien und löst viele beweisbar optimal. Umfangreiche Rechnungen bestätigen die Effizient der vorgestellten Methoden. KW - Nonconvexity KW - Uncertainty KW - Quadratic Programming KW - Relaxations KW - Cutting Planes KW - Standard Quadratic Programming KW - Pooling Problem KW - Gas Network Planning KW - Robust Optimization KW - Decomposition KW - Computations Y1 - 2017 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-6015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Caimi, Gabrio A1 - Fischer, Frank A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Railway Track Allocation T2 - Handbook of Optimization in the Railway Industry N2 - This chapter addresses the classical task to decide which train runs on which track in a railway network. In this context a track allocation defines the precise routing of trains through a railway network, which usually has only a limited capacity. Moreover, the departure and arrival times at the visited stations of each train must simultaneously meet several operational and safety requirements. The problem to find the 'best possible' allocation for all trains is called the track allocation problem (TTP). Railway systems can be modeled on a very detailed scale covering the behavior of individual trains and the safety system to a large extent. However, those microscopic models are too big and not scalable to large networks, which make them inappropriate for mathematical optimization on a network wide level. Hence, most network optimization approaches consider simplified, so called macroscopic, models. In the first part we take a look at the challenge to construct a reliable and condensed macroscopic model for the associated microscopic model and to facilitate the transition between both models of different scale. In the main part we focus on the optimization problem for macroscopic models of the railway system. Based on classical graph-theoretical tools the track allocation problem is formulated to determine conflict-free paths in corresponding time-expanded graphs. We present standard integer programming model formulations for the track allocation problem that model resource or block conflicts in terms of packing constraints. In addition, we discuss the role of maximal clique inequalities and the concept of configuration networks. We will also present classical decomposition approaches like Lagrangian relaxation and bundle methods. Furthermore, we will discuss recently developed techniques, e.g., dynamic graph generation. Finally, we will discuss the status quo and show a vision of mathematical optimization to support real world track allocation, i.e. integrated train routing and scheduling, in a data-dominated and digitized railway future. Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-72152-1 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72153-8 VL - 268 SP - 141 EP - 160 PB - Springer International Publishing ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Hendel, Gregor A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - From feasibility to improvement to proof: three phases of solving mixed-integer programs JF - Optimization Methods and Software N2 - Modern mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers employ dozens of auxiliary algorithmic components to support the branch-and-bound search in finding and improving primal solutions and in strengthening the dual bound. Typically, all components are tuned to minimize the average running time to prove optimality. In this article, we take a different look at the run of a MIP solver. We argue that the solution process consists of three distinct phases, namely achieving feasibility, improving the incumbent solution, and proving optimality. We first show that the entire solving process can be improved by adapting the search strategy with respect to the phase-specific aims using different control tunings. Afterwards, we provide criteria to predict the transition between the individual phases and evaluate the performance impact of altering the algorithmic behaviour of the non-commercial MIP solver Scip at the predicted phase transition points. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10556788.2017.1392519 VL - 33 IS - 3 SP - 499 EP - 517 PB - Taylor & Francis ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schmidt, Martin A1 - Assmann, Denis A1 - Burlacu, Robert A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Joormann, Imke A1 - Kanelakis, Nikolaos A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Oucherif, Djamal A1 - Pfetsch, Marc A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Sirvent, Matthias T1 - GasLib – A Library of Gas Network Instances JF - Data Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/data2040040 VL - 2 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - The ZIMPL modeling language JF - Optima Y1 - 2017 UR - http://www.mathopt.org/Optima-Issues/optima103.pdf VL - 103 SP - 8 EP - 9 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Combining NP-Hard Reduction Techniques and Strong Heuristics in an Exact Algorithm for the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem N2 - Borne out of a surprising variety of practical applications, the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem has attracted considerable interest during the past years. This interest has not only led to notable research on theoretical properties, but has also brought about several (exact) solvers-with steadily increasing performance. Continuing along this path, the following article introduces several new algorithms such as reduction techniques and heuristics and describes their integration into an exact solver. The new methods are evaluated with respect to both their theoretical and practical properties. Notably, the new exact framework allows to solve common problem instances from the literature faster than all previous approaches. Moreover, one large-scale benchmark instance from the 11th DIMACS Challenge can be solved for the first time to optimality and the primal-dual gap for two other ones can be significantly reduced. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-45 KW - maximum-weight connected subgraph Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64699 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Breuer, Matthias A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Siebeneicher, Patrick T1 - Pattern Detection For Large-Scale Railway Timetables N2 - We consider railway timetables of our industrial partner DB Fernverkehr AG that operates the ICE high speed trains in the long-distance passenger railway network of Germany. Such a timetable covers a whole year with 364 days and, typically, includes more than 45,000 trips. A rolling stock rotation plan is not created for the whole timetable at once. Instead the timetable is divided into regular invariant sections and irregular deviations (e.g. for public holidays). A separate rotation plan with a weekly period can then be provided for each of the different sections of the timetable. We present an algorithmic approach to automatically recognize these sections. Together with the supplementing visualisation of the timetable this method has shown to be very relevant for our industrial partner. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-17 KW - railway timetables KW - visualization KW - pattern detection Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-63390 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gilg, Brady A1 - Klug, Torsten A1 - Martienssen, Rosemarie A1 - Paat, Joseph A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schulz, Christof A1 - Seymen, Sinan A1 - Tesch, Alexander T1 - Conflict-Free Railway Track Assignment at Depots N2 - Managing rolling stock with no passengers aboard is a critical component of railway operations. In particular, one problem is to park the rolling stock on a given set of tracks at the end of a day or service. Depending on the parking assignment, shunting may be required in order for a parked train to depart or for an incoming train to park. Given a collection of tracks M and a collection of trains T with fixed arrival-departure timetable, the train assignment problem (TAP) is to determine the maximum number of trains from T that can be parked on M according to the timetable and without the use of shunting. Hence, efficiently solving the TAP allows to quickly compute feasible parking schedules that do not require further shunting adjustments. In this paper, we present two integer programming models for solving the TAP. To our knowledge, this is the first integrated approach that considers track lengths along with the three most common types of parking tracks. We compare these models on a theoretical level. We also prove that a decision version of the TAP is NP-complete, justifying the use of integer programming techniques. Using stochastic and robust modelling techniques, both models produce parking assignments that are optimized and robust according to random train delays. We conclude with computational results for both models, observing that they perform well on real timetables. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-23 KW - Depot Planning KW - Railway Track Assignment Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-63843 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Maher, Stephen J. T1 - Reduction Techniques for the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree Problem and the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem JF - Networks N2 - The concept of reduction has frequently distinguished itself as a pivotal ingredient of exact solving approaches for the Steiner tree problem in graphs. In this paper we broaden the focus and consider reduction techniques for three Steiner problem variants that have been extensively discussed in the literature and entail various practical applications: The prize-collecting Steiner tree problem, the rooted prize-collecting Steiner tree problem and the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem. By introducing and subsequently deploying numerous new reduction methods, we are able to drastically decrease the size of a large number of benchmark instances, already solving more than 90 percent of them to optimality. Furthermore, we demonstrate the impact of these techniques on exact solving, using the example of the state-of-the-art Steiner problem solver SCIP-Jack. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/net.21857 VL - 73 SP - 206 EP - 233 PB - Wiley ET - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Transformations for the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree Problem and the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem to SAP JF - Journal of Computational Mathematics N2 - Transformations of Steiner tree problem variants have been frequently discussed in the literature. Besides allowing to easily transfer complexity results, they constitute a central pillar of exact state-of-the-art solvers for well-known variants such as the Steiner tree problem in graphs. In this paper transformations for both the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem and the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem to the Steiner arborescence problem are introduced for the first time. Furthermore, we demonstrate the considerable implications for practical solving approaches, including the computation of strong upper and lower bounds. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4208/jcm.1709-m2017-0002 VL - 36 IS - 3 SP - 459 EP - 468 ER - TY - THES A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel T1 - A Generic Approach to Solving the Steiner Tree Problem and Variants N2 - Spawned by practical applications, numerous variations of the classical Steiner tree problem in graphs have been studied during the last decades. Despite the strong relationship between the different variants, solution approaches employed so far have been prevalently problem-specific. In contrast, we pursue a general-purpose strategy resulting in a solver able to solve both the classical Steiner tree problem and ten of its variants without modification. These variants include well-known problems such as the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem, the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem or the rectilinear minimum Steiner tree problem. Bolstered by a variety of new methods, most notably reduction techniques, our solver is not only of unprecedented versatility, but furthermore competitive or even superior to specialized state-of-the-art programs for several Steiner problem variants. KW - Steiner Tree Problem KW - Steiner Tree Problem Variants Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-57817 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Lamorgese, Leonardo A1 - Klug, Torsten A1 - Mannino, Carlo A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Recent Success Stories on Optimization of Railway Systems T2 - Proceedings of the IAROR conference RailTokyo N2 - Planning and operating railway transportation systems is an extremely hard task due to the combinatorial complexity of the underlying discrete optimization problems, the technical intricacies, and the immense size of the problem instances. Because of that, however, mathematical models and optimization techniques can result in large gains for both railway cus- tomers and operators, e.g., in terms of cost reductions or service quality improvements. In the last years a large and growing group of researchers in the OR community have devoted their attention to this domain devel- oping mathematical models and optimization approaches to tackle many of the relevant problems in the railway planning process. However, there is still a gap to bridge between theory and practice, with a few notable exceptions. In this paper we address three success stories, namely, long-term freight train routing (part I), mid-term rolling stock rotation planning (part II), and real-time train dispatching (part III). In each case, we describe real-life, successful implementations. We will dis- cuss the individual problem setting, survey the optimization literature, and focus on particular aspects addressed by the mathematical models. We demonstrate on concrete applications how mathematical optimization can support railway planning and operations. This gives proof that math- ematical optimization can support the planning of rolling stock resources. Thus, mathematical models and optimization can lead to a greater effi- ciency of railway operations and will serve as a powerful and innovative tool to meet recent challenges of the railway industry. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Melchiori, Anna A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Gleixner, Ambros A1 - Salvagnin, Domenico T1 - Branching on Multi-aggregated Variables T2 - Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming. CPAIOR 2015 N2 - In mixed-integer programming, the branching rule is a key component to a fast convergence of the branch-and-bound algorithm. The most common strategy is to branch on simple disjunctions that split the domain of a single integer variable into two disjoint intervals. Multi-aggregation is a presolving step that replaces variables by an affine linear sum of other variables, thereby reducing the problem size. While this simplification typically improves the performance of MIP solvers, it also restricts the degree of freedom in variable-based branching rules. We present a novel branching scheme that tries to overcome the above drawback by considering general disjunctions defined by multi-aggregated variables in addition to the standard disjunctions based on single variables. This natural idea results in a hybrid between variable- and constraint-based branching rules. Our implementation within the constraint integer programming framework SCIP incorporates this into a full strong branching rule and reduces the number of branch-and-bound nodes on a general test set of publicly available benchmark instances. For a specific class of problems, we show that the solving time decreases significantly. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18008-3_10 VL - 9075 SP - 141 EP - 156 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Klug, Torsten A1 - Junosza-Szaniawski, Konstanty A1 - Kwasiborski, Slawomir A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Fastest, Average and Quantile Schedule T2 - SOFSEM 2015: Theory and Practice of Computer Science N2 - We consider problems concerning the scheduling of a set of trains on a single track. For every pair of trains there is a minimum headway, which every train must wait before it enters the track after another train. The speed of each train is also given. Hence for every schedule - a sequence of trains - we may compute the time that is at least needed for all trains to travel along the track in the given order. We give the solution to three problems: the fastest schedule, the average schedule, and the problem of quantile schedules. The last problem is a question about the smallest upper bound on the time of a given fraction of all possible schedules. We show how these problems are related to the travelling salesman problem. We prove NP-completeness of the fastest schedule problem, NP-hardness of quantile of schedules problem, and polynomiality of the average schedule problem. We also describe some algorithms for all three problems. In the solution of the quantile problem we give an algorithm, based on a reverse search method, generating with polynomial delay all Eulerian multigraphs with the given degree sequence and a bound on the number of such multigraphs. A better bound is left as an open question. KW - scheduling KW - eulerian multigraphs Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46078-8_17 SP - 201 EP - 216 PB - Springer Berlin Heidelberg ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Fischer, Frank A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Comparing two dual relaxations of large scale train timetabling problems T2 - Proceedings of Conference on Advanced Systems in Public Transport 2015 N2 - Railway transportation and in particular train timetabling is one of the basic and source application areas of combinatorial optimization and integer programming. We will discuss two well established modeling techniques for the train timetabling problem. In this paper we focus on one major ingredient - the bounding by dual relaxations. We compare two classical dual relaxations of large scale time expanded train timetabling problems - the Lagrangean Dual and Lagrangean Decomposition. We discuss the convergence behavior and show limitations of the Lagrangean Decomposition approach for a configuration based model. We introduce a third dualization approach to overcome those limitations. Finally, we present promising preliminary computational experiments that show that our new approach indeed has superior convergence properties. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Hendel, Gregor T1 - Shift-and-Propagate JF - Journal of Heuristics N2 - In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the design of general purpose primal heuristics for use inside complete mixed integer programming solvers. Many of these heuristics rely on an optimal LP solution, which may take a significant amount of time to find. In this paper, we address this issue by introducing a pre-root primal heuristic that does not require a previously found LP solution. This heuristic, named Shift-and-Propagate , applies domain propagation techniques to quickly drive a variable assignment towards feasibility. Computational experiments indicate that this heuristic is a powerful supplement to existing rounding and propagation heuristics. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-014-9271-0 VL - 21 IS - 1 SP - 73 EP - 106 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Heismann, Olga T1 - The hypergraph assignment problem JF - Discrete Optimization Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disopt.2014.11.002 VL - 15 SP - 15 EP - 25 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Shinano, Yuji T1 - SCIP-Jack - A massively parallel STP solver N2 - In this article we describe the impact from embedding a 15 year old model for solving the Steiner tree problem in graphs in a state-of-the-art MIP-Framework, making the result run in a massively parallel environment and extending the model to solve as many variants as possible. We end up with a high-perfomance solver that is capable of solving previously unsolved instances and, in contrast to its predecessor, is freely available for academic research. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-35 KW - Steiner Tree Problem KW - Mixed-Integer Programming KW - Branch-and-Cut KW - DIMACS Challenge Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-52293 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - A Coarse-To-Fine Approach to the Railway Rolling Stock Rotation Problem N2 - We propose a new coarse-to-fine approach to solve certain linear programs by column generation. The problems that we address contain layers corresponding to different levels of detail, i.e., coarse layers as well as fine layers. These layers are utilized to design efficient pricing rules. In a nutshell, the method shifts the pricing of a fine linear program to a coarse counterpart. In this way, major decisions are taken in the coarse layer, while minor details are tackled within the fine layer. We elucidate our methodology by an application to a complex railway rolling stock rotation problem. We provide comprehensive computational results that demonstrate the benefit of this new technique for the solution of large scale problems. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-26 KW - column generation KW - coarse-to-fine approach KW - multi-layer approach KW - rolling stock rotation problem Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-51009 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Karbstein, Marika A1 - Mehrgardt, Julika A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - The Cycle Embedding Problem N2 - Given two hypergraphs, representing a fine and a coarse "layer", and a cycle cover of the nodes of the coarse layer, the cycle embedding problem (CEP) asks for an embedding of the coarse cycles into the fine layer. The CEP is NP-hard for general hypergraphs, but it can be solved in polynomial time for graphs. We propose an integer rogramming formulation for the CEP that provides a complete escription of the CEP polytope for the graphical case. The CEP comes up in railway vehicle rotation scheduling. We present computational results for problem instances of DB Fernverkehr AG that justify a sequential coarse-first-fine-second planning approach. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-37 KW - cycle embedding problem KW - railway vehicle rotation scheduling KW - sequential coarse-first-fine-second planning approach Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-52788 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Humpola, Jesco A1 - Lehmann, Thomas A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin T1 - A primal heuristic for optimizing the topology of gas networks based on dual information JF - EURO Journal on Computational Optimization N2 - We present a novel heuristic to identify feasible solutions of a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem arising in natural gas transportation: the selection of new pipelines to enhance the network's capacity to a desired level in a cost-efficient way. We solve this problem in a linear programming based branch-and-cut approach, where we deal with the nonlinearities by linear outer approximation and spatial branching. At certain nodes of the branching tree, we compute a KKT point of a nonlinear relaxation. Based on the information from the KKT point we alter some of the binary variables in a locally promising way exploiting our problem-specific structure. On a test set of real-world instances, we are able to increase the chance of identifying feasible solutions by some order of magnitude compared to standard MINLP heuristics that are already built in the general-purpose MINLP solver SCIP. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13675-014-0029-0 VL - 3 IS - 1 SP - 53 EP - 78 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Reuther, Markus T1 - Local Search for the Resource Constrained Assignment Problem T2 - 14th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems N2 - The resource constrained assignment problem (RCAP) is to find a minimal cost cycle partition in a directed graph such that a resource constraint is fulfilled. The RCAP has its roots in an application that deals with the covering of a railway timetable by rolling stock vehicles. Here, the resource constraint corresponds to maintenance constraints for rail vehicles. Moreover, the RCAP generalizes several variants of vehicle routing problems. We contribute a local search algorithm for this problem that is derived from an exact algorithm which is similar to the Hungarian method for the standard assignment problem. Our algorithm can be summarized as a k-OPT heuristic, exchanging k arcs of an alternating cycle of the incumbent solution in each improvement step. The alternating cycles are found by dual arguments from linear programming. We present computational results for instances from our railway application at Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr AG as well as for instances of the vehicle routing problem from the literature. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2014.62 VL - 42 SP - 62 EP - 78 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf T1 - An Approximation Result for Matchings in Partitioned Hypergraphs N2 - We investigate the matching and perfect matching polytopes of hypergraphs having a special structure, which we call partitioned hypergraphs. We show that the integrality gap of the standard LP-relaxation is at most $2\sqrt{d}$ for partitioned hypergraphs with parts of size $\leq d$. Furthermore, we show that this bound cannot be improved to $\mathcal{O}(d^{0.5-\epsilon})$. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-30 Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-51083 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maher, Stephen J. T1 - Solving the integrated airline recovery problem using column-and-row generation JF - Transportation Science N2 - Airline recovery presents very large and difficult problems requiring high quality solutions within very short time limits. To improve computational performance, the complete airline recovery problem is generally formulated as a series of sequential stages. While the sequential approach greatly simplifies the complete recovery problem, there is no guarantee of global optimality or solution quality. To address this, there has been increasing interest in the development of efficient solution techniques to solve an integrated recovery problem. In this paper, an integrated airline recovery problem is proposed by integrating the schedule, crew and aircraft recovery stages. To achieve short runtimes and high quality solutions, this problem is solved using column-and-row generation. Column-and-row generation achieves an improvement in solution runtimes by reducing the problem size and thereby achieving a faster execution of each LP solve. Further, the results demonstrate that a good upper bound achieved early in the solution process, indicating an improved solution quality with the early termination of the algorithm. This paper also details the integration of the row generation procedure with branch-and-price, which is used to achieve integral optimal solutions. The benefits of applying column-and-row generation to solve the integrated recovery problem are demonstrated with a comparison to a standard column generation technique. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2014.0552 VL - 50 IS - 1 SP - 216 EP - 239 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Mehrgardt, Julika A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Waas, Kerstin T1 - Re-Optimization of Rolling Stock Rotations N2 - The Rolling Stock Rotation Problem is to schedule rail vehicles in order to cover timetabled trips by a cost optimal set of vehicle rotations. The problem integrates several facets of railway optimization, such as vehicle composition, maintenance constraints, and regularity aspects. In industrial applications existing vehicle rotations often have to be re-optimized to deal with timetable changes or construction sites. We present an integrated modeling and algorithmic approach to this task as well as computational results for industrial problem instances of DB Fernverkehr AG. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07001-8_8 SP - 49 EP - 55 PB - Springer International Publishing ET - Operations Research Proceedings 2013 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ralphs, Ted A1 - Shinano, Yuji A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Parallel Solvers for Mixed Integer Linear Programming N2 - In this article, we introduce parallel mixed integer linear programming (MILP) solvers. MILP solving algorithms have been improved tremendously in the last two decades. Currently, commercial MILP solvers are known as a strong optimization tool. Parallel MILP solver development has started in 1990s. However, since the improvements of solving algorithms have much impact to solve MILP problems than application of parallel computing, there were not many visible successes. With the spread of multi-core CPUs, current state-of-the-art MILP solvers have parallel implementations and researches to apply parallelism in the solving algorithm also getting popular. We summarize current existing parallel MILP solver architectures. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-74 KW - parallel computing KW - integer programming KW - branch-and-bound KW - supercomputing Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-62239 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Walther, Tom T1 - Modelling compressor stations in gas networks N2 - Gas networks are an important application area for optimization. When considering long-range transmission, compressor stations play a crucial role in these applications. The purpose of this report is to collect and systematize the models used for compressor stations in the literature. The emphasis is on recent work on simple yet accurate polyhedral models that may replace more simplified traditional models without increasing model complexity. The report also describes an extension of the compressor station data available in GasLib (http://gaslib.zib.de/) with the parameters of these models. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-67 KW - MINLP model KW - compressor station KW - gas compressor modeling KW - nonlinear model KW - polyhedral model Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-67443 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Witzig, Jakob A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan T1 - Experiments with Conflict Analysis in Mixed Integer Programming T2 - Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming. CPAIOR 2017 N2 - The analysis of infeasible subproblems plays an import role in solving mixed integer programs (MIPs) and is implemented in most major MIP solvers. There are two fundamentally different concepts to generate valid global constraints from infeasible subproblems. The first is to analyze the sequence of implications obtained by domain propagation that led to infeasibility. The result of the analysis is one or more sets of contradicting variable bounds from which so-called conflict constraints can be generated. This concept has its origin in solving satisfiability problems and is similarly used in constraint programming. The second concept is to analyze infeasible linear programming (LP) relaxations. The dual LP solution provides a set of multipliers that can be used to generate a single new globally valid linear constraint. The main contribution of this short paper is an empirical evaluation of two ways to combine both approaches. Experiments are carried out on general MIP instances from standard public test sets such as Miplib2010; the presented algorithms have been implemented within the non-commercial MIP solver SCIP. Moreover, we present a pool-based approach to manage conflicts which addresses the way a MIP solver traverses the search tree better than aging strategies known from SAT solving. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59776-8_17 VL - 10335 SP - 211 EP - 222 PB - Springer ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vigerske, Stefan A1 - Gleixner, Ambros T1 - SCIP: Global Optimization of Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs in a Branch-and-Cut Framework JF - Optimization Methods & Software N2 - This paper describes the extensions that were added to the constraint integer programming framework SCIP in order to enable it to solve convex and nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) to global optimality. SCIP implements a spatial branch-and-bound algorithm based on a linear outer-approximation, which is computed by convex over- and underestimation of nonconvex functions. An expression graph representation of nonlinear constraints allows for bound tightening, structure analysis, and reformulation. Primal heuristics are employed throughout the solving process to find feasible solutions early. We provide insights into the performance impact of individual MINLP solver components via a detailed computational study over a large and heterogeneous test set. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10556788.2017.1335312 VL - 33 IS - 3 SP - 563 EP - 593 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Breuer, Matthias A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Siebeneicher, Patrick T1 - Pattern Detection For Large-Scale Railway Timetables T2 - Proceedings of the IAROR conference RailLille N2 - We consider railway timetables of our industrial partner DB Fernverkehr AG that operates the ICE high speed trains in the long-distance passenger railway network of Germany. Such a timetable covers a whole year with 364 days and, typically, includes more than 45,000 trips. A rolling stock rotation plan is not created for the whole timetable at once. Instead the timetable is divided into regular invariant sections and irregular deviations (e.g. for public holidays). A separate rotation plan with a weekly period can then be provided for each of the different sections of the timetable. We present an algorithmic approach to automatically recognize these sections. Together with the supplementing visualisation of the timetable this method has shown to be very relevant for our industrial partner. Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schulz, Christof A1 - Swarat, Elmar A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Duty Rostering in Public Transport - Facing Preferences, Fairness, and Fatigue T2 - Proceedings of Conference on Advanced Systems in Public Transport 2015 (CASPT2015) N2 - Duty rostering problems occur in different application contexts and come in different flavors. They give rise to very large scale integer programs which ypically have lots of solutions and extremely fractional LP relaxations. In such a situation, heuristics can be a viable algorithmic choice. We propose an mprovement method of the Lin-Kernighan type for the solution of duty rostering problems. We illustrate its versatility and solution quality on three different applications in public transit, vehicle routing, and airline rostering with a focus on the management of preferences, fairness, and fatigue, respectively. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Hoppmann, Heide A1 - Karbstein, Marika T1 - Umsteigen ohne Warten T2 - HEUREKA 2017 N2 - Wir stellen einen mathematischen Optimierungsansatz zur Berechnung von periodischen Taktfahrplänen vor, bei dem die Umsteigezeiten unter Berücksichtigung des Passagierverhaltens minimiert werden. Wir untersuchen damit den Einfluss wichtiger Systemparameter und Verhaltensmuster auf die Beförderungsqualität. Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Saitenmacher, René A1 - Walther, Tom T1 - Analysis of operating modes of complex compressor stations T2 - Proceedings of Operations Research 2016 N2 - We consider the modeling of operation modes for complex compressor stations (i.e., ones with several in- or outlets) in gas networks. In particular, we propose a refined model that allows to precompute tighter relaxations for each operation mode. These relaxations may be used to strengthen the compressor station submodels in gas network optimization problems. We provide a procedure to obtain the refined model from the input data for the original model. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55702-1_34 SP - 251 EP - 257 ER - TY - THES A1 - Viernickel, Jan Merlin T1 - Abschätzung der Suchbaumgröße und Laufzeit für Branch-and-Bound Algorithmen Y1 - 2016 ER - TY - THES A1 - Gottwald, Robert Lion T1 - Experiments with Concurrency and Heuristics in SCIP Y1 - 2016 ER - TY - THES A1 - Roessig, Ansgar T1 - Formulations and algorithms for the USCCSP Y1 - 2016 ER - TY - THES A1 - Teuchert, Andreas T1 - Degeneriertheit im Simplexverfahren Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hendel, Gregor T1 - Exploiting Solving Phases for Mixed-Integer Programs N2 - Modern MIP solving software incorporates dozens of auxiliary algorithmic components for supporting the branch-and-bound search in finding and improving solutions and in strengthening the relaxation. Intuitively, a dynamic solving strategy with an appropriate emphasis on different solving components and strategies is desirable during the search process. We propose an adaptive solver behavior that dynamically reacts on transitions between the three typical phases of a MIP solving process: The first phase objective is to find a feasible solution. During the second phase, a sequence of incumbent solutions gets constructed until the incumbent is eventually optimal. Proving optimality is the central objective of the remaining third phase. Based on the MIP-solver SCIP, we demonstrate the usefulness of the phase concept both with an exact recognition of the optimality of a solution, and provide heuristic alternatives to make use of the concept in practice. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-64 KW - Branch-and-Bound, Mixed-Integer Programming Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-57098 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Waas, Kerstin A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Integrated Optimization of Rolling Stock Rotations for Intercity Railways JF - Transportation Science N2 - This paper proposes a highly integrated solution approach for rolling stock planning problems in the context of long distance passenger traffic between cities. The main contributions are a generic hypergraph-based mixed-integer programming model for the considered rolling stock rotation problem and an integrated algorithm for its solution. The newly developed algorithm is able to handle a large spectrum of industrial railway requirements, such as vehicle composition, maintenance constraints, infrastructure capacities, and regularity aspects. We show that our approach has the power to produce rolling stock rotations that can be implemented in practice. In this way, the rolling stock rotations at the largest German long distance operator Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr AG could be optimized by an automated system utilizing advanced mathematical programming techniques. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2015.0633 VL - 50 IS - 3 SP - 863 EP - 877 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Yokoyama, Ryohei A1 - Shinano, Yuji A1 - Taniguchi, Syusuke A1 - Ohkura, Masashi A1 - Wakui, Tetsuya T1 - Optimization of energy supply systems by MILP branch and bound method in consideration of hierarchical relationship between design and operation N2 - To attain the highest performance of energy supply systems, it is necessary to rationally determine types, capacities, and numbers of equipment in consideration of their operational strategies corresponding to seasonal and hourly variations in energy demands. In the combinatorial optimization method based on the mixed-integer linear programming (MILP), integer variables are used to express the selection, numbers, and on/off status of operation of equipment, and the number of these variables increases with those of equipment and periods for variations in energy demands, and affects the computation efficiency significantly. In this paper, a MILP method utilizing the hierarchical relationship between design and operation variables is proposed to solve the optimal design problem of energy supply systems efficiently: At the upper level, the optimal values of design variables are searched by the branch and bound method; At the lower level, the values of operation variables are optimized independently at each period by the branch and bound method under the values of design variables given tentatively during the search at the upper level; Lower bounds for the optimal value of the objective function are evaluated, and are utilized for the bounding operations at both the levels. This method is implemented into open and commercial MILP solvers. Illustrative and practical case studies on the optimal design of cogeneration systems are conducted, and the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method are clarified. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-09 KW - Energy supply systems KW - Optimal design KW - Optimal operation KW - Mixed-integer linear programming KW - Branch and bound method KW - Hierarchical approach Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-49413 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gleixner, Ambros A1 - Steffy, Daniel A1 - Wolter, Kati T1 - Iterative Refinement for Linear Programming N2 - We describe an iterative refinement procedure for computing extended precision or exact solutions to linear programming problems (LPs). Arbitrarily precise solutions can be computed by solving a sequence of closely related LPs with limited precision arithmetic. The LPs solved share the same constraint matrix as the original problem instance and are transformed only by modification of the objective function, right-hand side, and variable bounds. Exact computation is used to compute and store the exact representation of the transformed problems, while numeric computation is used for solving LPs. At all steps of the algorithm the LP bases encountered in the transformed problems correspond directly to LP bases in the original problem description. We show that this algorithm is effective in practice for computing extended precision solutions and that it leads to a direct improvement of the best known methods for solving LPs exactly over the rational numbers. Our implementation is publically available as an extension of the academic LP solver SoPlex. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-15 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-55118 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Winkler, Michael T1 - Structure-based primal heuristics for mixed integer programming N2 - Primal heuristics play an important role in the solving of mixed integer programs (MIPs). They help to reach optimality faster and provide good feasible solutions early in the solving process. In this paper, we present two new primal heuristics which take into account global structures available within MIP solvers to construct feasible solutions at the beginning of the solving process. These heuristics follow a large neighborhood search (LNS) approach and use global structures to define a neighborhood that is with high probability significantly easier to process while (hopefully) still containing good feasible solutions. The definition of the neighborhood is done by iteratively fixing variables and propagating these fixings. Thereby, fixings are determined based on the predicted impact they have on the subsequent domain propagation. The neighborhood is solved as a sub-MIP and solutions are transferred back to the original problem. Our computational experiments on standard MIP test sets show that the proposed heuristics find solutions for about every third instance and therewith help to improve the average solving time. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-26 KW - mixed-integer programming, large neighborhood search, primal heuristics, domain propagation Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-55518 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maher, Stephen J. A1 - Murray, John M. T1 - The unrooted set covering connected subgraph problem differentiating between HIV envelope sequences JF - European Journal of Operational Research N2 - This paper presents a novel application of operations research techniques to the analysis of HIV Env gene sequences, aiming to identify key features that are possible vaccine targets. These targets are identified as being critical to the transmission of HIV by being present in early transmitted (founder) sequences and absent in later chronic sequences. Identifying the key features of Env involves two steps: first, calculating the covariance of amino acid combinations and positions to form a network of related and compensatory mutations; and second, developing an integer program to identify the smallest connected subgraph of the constructed covariance network that exhibits a set covering property. The integer program developed for this analysis, labelled the unrooted set covering connected subgraph problem (USCCSP), integrates a set covering problem and connectivity evaluation, the latter formulated as a network flow problem. The resulting integer program is very large and complex, requiring the use of Benders' decomposition to develop an efficient solution approach. The results will demonstrate the necessity of applying acceleration techniques to the Benders' decomposition solution approach and the effectiveness of these techniques and heuristic approaches for solving the USCCSP. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2015.07.011 VL - 248 IS - 2 SP - 668 EP - 680 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Witzig, Jakob T1 - Reoptimization Techniques in MIP Solvers N2 - Recently, there have been many successful applications of optimization algorithms that solve a sequence of quite similar mixed-integer programs (MIPs) as subproblems. Traditionally, each problem in the sequence is solved from scratch. In this paper we consider reoptimization techniques that try to benefit from information obtained by solving previous problems of the sequence. We focus on the case that subsequent MIPs differ only in the objective function or that the feasible region is reduced. We propose extensions of the very complex branch-and-bound algorithms employed by general MIP solvers based on the idea to ``warmstart'' using the final search frontier of the preceding solver run. We extend the academic MIP solver SCIP by these techniques to obtain a reoptimizing branch-and-bound solver and report computational results which show the effectiveness of the approach. Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-319-20086-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20086-6_14 VL - 9125 SP - 181 EP - 192 PB - Springer ET - Experimental Algorithms, Lecture Notes in Computer Science ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Hayn, Christine A1 - Heitsch, Holger A1 - Henrion, René A1 - Leövey, Hernan A1 - Möller, Andris A1 - Römisch, Werner T1 - Methods for verifying booked capacities T2 - Evaluating gas network capacities Y1 - 2015 SP - 291 EP - 315 PB - Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Winkler, Michael T1 - Structure-driven fix-and-propagate heuristics for mixed integer programming N2 - Primal heuristics play an important role in the solving of mixed integer programs (MIPs). They often provide good feasible solutions early in the solving process and help to solve instances to optimality faster. In this paper, we present a scheme for primal start heuristics that can be executed without previous knowledge of an LP solution or a previously found integer feasible solution. It uses global structures available within MIP solvers to iteratively fix integer variables and propagate these fixings. Thereby, fixings are determined based on the predicted impact they have on the subsequent domain propagation. If sufficiently many variables can be fixed that way, the resulting problem is solved as an LP and the solution is rounded. If the rounded solution did not provide a feasible solution already, a sub-MIP is solved for the neighborhood defined by the variable fixings performed in the first phase. The global structures help to define a neighborhood that is with high probability significantly easier to process while (hopefully) still containing good feasible solutions. We present three primal heuristics that use this scheme based on different global structures. Our computational experiments on standard MIP test sets show that the proposed heuristics find solutions for about three out of five instances and therewith help to improve several performance measures for MIP solvers, including the primal integral and the average solving time. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-56 KW - mixed-integer programming KW - primal heuristics KW - fix-and-propagate KW - large neighborhood search KW - domain propagation Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-65387 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Hendel, Gregor A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - The Three Phases of MIP Solving N2 - Modern MIP solvers employ dozens of auxiliary algorithmic components to support the branch-and-bound search in finding and improving primal solutions and in strengthening the dual bound. Typically, all components are tuned to minimize the average running time to prove optimality. In this article, we take a different look at the run of a MIP solver. We argue that the solution process consists of three different phases, namely achieving feasibility, improving the incumbent solution, and proving optimality. We first show that the entire solving process can be improved by adapting the search strategy with respect to the phase-specific aims using different control tunings. Afterwards, we provide criteria to predict the transition between the individual phases and evaluate the performance impact of altering the algorithmic behavior of the MIP solver SCIP at the predicted phase transition points. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-78 KW - optimization software KW - mixed-integer programming KW - branch-and-bound KW - adaptive search behavior KW - optimality prediction Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61607 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas T1 - A System to Evaluate Gas Network Capacities: Concepts and Implementation N2 - Since 2005, the gas market in the European Union is liberalized and the trading of natural gas is decoupled from its transport. The transport is done by so-called transmissions system operators or TSOs. The market model established by the European Union views the gas transmission network as a black box, providing shippers (gas traders and consumers) the opportunity to transport gas from any entry to any exit. TSOs are required to offer maximum independent capacities at each entry and exit such that the resulting gas flows can be realized by the network without compromising security of supply. Therefore, evaluating the available transport capacities is extremely important to the TSOs. This paper gives an overview of the toolset for evaluating gas network capacities that has been developed within the ForNe project, a joint research project of seven research partners initiated by Open Grid Europe, Germany's biggest TSO. While most of the relevant mathematics is described in the book "Evaluating Gas Network Capacities", this article sketches the system as a whole, describes some developments that have taken place recently, and gives some details about the current implementation. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-03 KW - operations research in energy KW - gas network optimization KW - entry-exit model KW - freely allocable capacity KW - large-scale mixed-integer nonlinear programming Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61931 SN - 1438-0064 N1 - A revised and extended version is available as ZIB-Report 18-11. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Griewank, Andreas A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Lehmann, Lutz A1 - Hasenfelder, Richard A1 - Radons, Manuel T1 - Piecewise linear secant approximation via Algorithmic Piecewise Differentiation N2 - It is shown how piecewise differentiable functions \(F: R^n → R^m\) that are defined by evaluation programs can be approximated locally by a piecewise linear model based on a pair of sample points x̌ and x̂. We show that the discrepancy between function and model at any point x is of the bilinear order O(||x − x̌|| ||x − x̂||). This is a little surprising since x ∈ R^n may vary over the whole Euclidean space, and we utilize only two function samples F̌ = F(x̌) and F̂ = F(x̂), as well as the intermediates computed during their evaluation. As an application of the piecewise linearization procedure we devise a generalized Newton’s method based on successive piecewise linearization and prove for it sufficient conditions for convergence and convergence rates equaling those of semismooth Newton. We conclude with the derivation of formulas for the numerically stable implementation of the aforedeveloped piecewise linearization methods. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-54 KW - Automatic differentiation KW - Computational graph KW - Lipschitz continuity KW - Generalized Hermite interpolation KW - ADOL-C Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61642 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kickhöfer, Benjamin A1 - Kern, Julia T1 - Pricing local emission exposure of road traffic: An agent-based approach JF - Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment N2 - This paper proposes a new approach to iteratively calculate local air pollution exposure tolls in large-scale urban settings by taking the exposure times and locations of individuals into consideration. It explicitly avoids detailed air pollution concentration calculations and is therefore characterized by little data requirements, reasonable computation times for iterative calculations, and open-source compatibility. In a first step, the paper shows how to derive time-dependent vehicle-specific exposure tolls in an agent-based model. It closes the circle from the polluting entity, to the receiving entity, to damage costs, to tolls, and back to the behavioral change of the polluting entity. In a second step, the approach is applied to a large-scale real-world scenario of the Munich metropolitan area in Germany. Changes in emission levels, exposure costs, and user benefits are calculated. These figures are compared to a flat emission toll, and to a regulatory measure (a speed reduction in the inner city), respectively. The results indicate that the flat emission toll reduces overall emissions more significantly than the exposure toll, but its exposure cost reductions are rather small. For the exposure toll, overall emissions increase for freight traffic which implies a potential conflict between pricing schemes to optimize local emission exposure and others to abate climate change. Regarding the mitigation of exposure costs caused by urban travelers, the regulatory measure is found to be an effective strategy, but it implies losses in user benefits. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2015.04.019 VL - 37 SP - 14 EP - 28 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Template-based Re-optimization of Rolling Stock Rotations JF - Public Transport N2 - Rolling stock, i.e., the set of railway vehicles, is among the most expensive and limited assets of a railway company and must be used efficiently. We consider in this paper the re-optimization problem to recover from unforeseen disruptions. We propose a template concept that allows to recover cost minimal rolling stock rotations from reference rotations under a large variety of operational requirements. To this end, connection templates as well as rotation templates are introduced and their application within a rolling stock rotation planning model is discussed. We present an implementation within the rolling stock rotation optimization framework rotor and computational results for scenarios provided by DB Fernverkehr AG, one of the leading railway operators in Europe. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-017-0152-4 SP - 1 EP - 19 PB - Springer ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schenker, Sebastian A1 - Vierhaus, Ingmar A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Fügenschuh, Armin A1 - Skutella, Martin ED - Stark, Rainer ED - Seliger, Günther ED - Bonvoisin, Jérémy T1 - Optimisation Methods in Sustainable Manufacturing BT - Challenges, Solutions and Implementation Perspectives T2 - Sustainable Manufacturing N2 - Sustainable manufacturing is driven by the insight that the focus on the economic dimension in current businesses and lifestyles has to be broadened to cover all three pillars of sustainability: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-3-319-48514-0 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48514-0_15 SP - 239 EP - 253 PB - Springer International Publishing ER - TY - GEN A1 - Maher, Stephen J. A1 - Desaulniers, Guy A1 - Soumis, Francois T1 - The tail assignment problem with look-ahead maintenance constraints N2 - The tail assignment problem is a critical part of the airline planning process that assigns specific aircraft to sequences of flights, called lines-of-flight, to be operated the next day. The aim of this paper is to develop an operationally flexible tail assignment that satisfies short-range---within the next three days---aircraft maintenance requirements and performs the aircraft/flight gate assignment for each input line-of-flight. While maintenance plans commonly span multiple days, the related tail assignment problems can be overly complex and provide little recourse in the event of schedule perturbations. The presented approach addresses operational uncertainty by extending the one-day routes aircraft maintenance routing approach to satisfy maintenance requirements explicitly for the current day and implicitly for the subsequent two days. A mathematical model is presented that integrates the gate assignment and maintenance planning problems. To increase the satisfaction of maintenance requirements, an iterative algorithm is developed that modifies the fixed lines-of-flight provided as input to the tail assignment problem. The tail assignment problem and iterative algorithm are demonstrated to effectively satisfy maintenance requirements within appropriate run times using input data collected from three different airlines. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-56 KW - Tail assignment KW - Column generation KW - Iterative algorithm Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56717 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ahmadi, Sepideh A1 - Gritzbach, Sascha F. A1 - Lund-Nguyen, Kathryn A1 - McCullough-Amal, Devita T1 - Rolling Stock Rotation Optimization in Days of Strike: An Automated Approach for Creating an Alternative Timetable N2 - The operation of a railway network as large as Deutsche Bahn's Intercity Express (ICE) hinges on a number of factors, such as the availability of personnel and the assignment of physical vehicles to a timetable schedule, a problem known as the rolling stock rotation problem (RSRP). In this paper, we consider the problem of creating an alternative timetable in the case that there is a long-term disruption, such as a strike, and the effects that this alternative timetable has on the resulting vehicle rotation plan. We define a priority measure via the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of each trip in the timetable and therefore which trips to cancel or retain. We then compare our results with those of a limited timetable manually designed by Deutsche Bahn (DB). We find that while our timetable results in a more expensive rotation plan, its flexibility lends itself to a number of simple improvements. Furthermore, our priority measure has the potential to be integrated into the rolling stock rotation optimization process, in particular, the Rotation Optimizer for Railways (ROTOR) software, via the cost function. Ultimately, our method provides the foundation for an automated way of creating a new timetable quickly, and potentially in conjunction with a new rotation plan, in the case of a limited scenario. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-52 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56425 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schulz, Christof A1 - Seidl, Stephan A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Integration of Duty Scheduling and Rostering to Increase Driver Satisfaction N2 - Integrated treatment of hitherto individual steps in the planning process of public transit companies discloses opportunities to reduce costs and to improve the quality of service. The arising integrated planning problems are complex and their solution requires the development of novel mathematical methods. This article proposes a mathematical optimization approach to integrate duty scheduling and rostering in public transit, which allows to significantly increase driver satisfaction at almost zero cost. This is important in order to to increase the attractiveness of the driver profession. The integration is based on coupling the subproblems by duty templates, which, compared to a coupling by duties, drastically reduces the problem complexity. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-50 KW - Benders decomposition KW - driver satisfaction KW - duty templates KW - duty scheduling KW - rostering Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56299 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf T1 - A Hall Condition for Normal Hypergraphs N2 - Conforti, Cornuéjols, Kapoor, and Vusković gave a Hall-type condition for the non-existence of a perfect matching in a balanced hypergraph. We generalize this result to the class of normal hypergraphs. T3 - ZIB-Report - 15-45 KW - Matchings in hypergraphs KW - Normal hypergraphs KW - Hall condition Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-56175 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Miltenberger, Matthias A1 - Weninger, Dieter T1 - Progress in presolving for mixed integer programming JF - Mathematical Programming Computation N2 - This paper describes three presolving techniques for solving mixed integer programming problems (MIPs) that were implemented in the academic MIP solver SCIP. The task of presolving is to reduce the problem size and strengthen the formulation, mainly by eliminating redundant information and exploiting problem structures. The first method fixes continuous singleton columns and extends results known from duality fixing. The second analyzes and exploits pairwise dominance relations between variables, whereas the third detects isolated subproblems and solves them independently. The performance of the presented techniques is demonstrated on two MIP test sets. One contains all benchmark instances from the last three MIPLIB versions, while the other consists of real-world supply chain management problems. The computational results show that the combination of all three presolving techniques almost halves the solving time for the considered supply chain management problems. For the MIPLIB instances we obtain a speedup of 20 % on affected instances while not degrading the performance on the remaining problems. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-015-0083-5 VL - 7 IS - 4 SP - 367 EP - 398 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - A Coarse-To-Fine Approach to the Railway Rolling Stock Rotation Problem T2 - 14th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems N2 - We propose a new coarse-to-fine approach to solve certain linear programs by column generation. The problems that we address contain layers corresponding to different levels of detail, i.e., coarse layers as well as fine layers. These layers are utilized to design efficient pricing rules. In a nutshell, the method shifts the pricing of a fine linear program to a coarse counterpart. In this way, major decisions are taken in the coarse layer, while minor details are tackled within the fine layer. We elucidate our methodology by an application to a complex railway rolling stock rotation problem. We provide comprehensive computational results that demonstrate the benefit of this new technique for the solution of large scale problems. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2014.79 VL - 42 SP - 79 EP - 91 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Vehicle Rotation Planning for Intercity Railways N2 - This paper provides a generic formulation for rolling stock planning problems in the context of intercity passenger traffic. The main contributions are a graph theoretical model and a Mixed-Integer-Programming formulation that integrate all main requirements of the considered Vehicle-Rotation-Planning problem (VRPP). We show that it is possible to solve this model for real-world instances provided by our industrial partner DB Fernverkehr AG using modern algorithms and computers. T3 - ZIB-Report - 12-11 KW - rolling-stock-planning KW - mixed-integer-programming KW - hypergraphs KW - column generation KW - rapid branching Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-14731 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Euler, Ricardo A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Puchert, Christian A1 - Takkula, Tuomo T1 - ULD Build-Up Scheduling with Logic-Based Benders Decomposition T2 - Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research N2 - We study a complex planning and scheduling problem arising from the build-up process of air cargo pallets and containers, collectively referred to as unit load devices (ULD), in which ULDs must be assigned to workstations for loading. Since air freight usually becomes available gradually along the planning horizon, ULD build-ups must be scheduled neither too early to avoid underutilizing ULD capacity, nor too late to avoid resource conflicts with other flights. Whenever possible, ULDs should be built up in batches, thereby giving ground handlers more freedom to rearrange cargo and utilize the ULD's capacity efficiently. The resulting scheduling problem has an intricate cost function and produces large time-expanded models, especially for longer planning horizons. We propose a logic-based Benders decomposition approach that assigns batches to time intervals and workstations in the master problem, while the actual schedule is decided in a subproblem. By choosing appropriate intervals, the subproblem becomes a feasibility problem that decomposes over the workstations. Additionally, the similarity of many batches is exploited by a strengthening procedure for no-good cuts. We benchmark our approach against a time-expanded MIP formulation from the literature on a publicly available data set. It solves 15% more instances to optimality and decreases run times by more than 50% in the geometric mean. This improvement is especially pronounced for longer planning horizons of up to one week, where the Benders approach solves over 50% instances more than the baseline Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60597-0_17 VL - 14742 SP - 259 EP - 276 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Euler, Ricardo A1 - Maristany de las Casas, Pedro T1 - Labeling methods for partially ordered paths JF - European Journal of Operational Research N2 - The landscape of applications and subroutines relying on shortest path computations continues to grow steadily. This growth is driven by the undeniable success of shortest path algorithms in theory and practice. It also introduces new challenges as the models and assessing the optimality of paths become more complicated. Hence, multiple recent publications in the field adapt existing labeling methods in an ad hoc fashion to their specific problem variant without considering the underlying general structure: they always deal with multi-criteria scenarios, and those criteria define different partial orders on the paths. In this paper, we introduce the partial order shortest path problem (POSP), a generalization of the multi-objective shortest path problem (MOSP) and in turn also of the classical shortest path problem. POSP captures the particular structure of many shortest path applications as special cases. In this generality, we study optimality conditions or the lack of them, depending on the objective functions’ properties. Our final contribution is a big lookup table summarizing our findings and providing the reader with an easy way to choose among the most recent multi-criteria shortest path algorithms depending on their problems’ weight structure. Examples range from time-dependent shortest path and bottleneck path problems to the electric vehicle shortest path problem with recharging and complex financial weight functions studied in the public transportation community. Our results hold for general digraphs and, therefore, surpass previous generalizations that were limited to acyclic graphs. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2024.05.002 VL - 318 IS - 1 SP - 19 EP - 30 PB - Elsevier BV ET - 1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Henning, Erin T1 - Tropical Geometry Approach to Shortest Paths with Parameterized Arc Weights - A Case Study in Public Transportation Networks N2 - In graphical representations of public transportation networks, there is often some degree of uncertainty in the arc values, due to delays or transfer times. This uncertainty can be expressed as a parameterized weight on the transfer arcs. Classical shortest path algorithms often have difficulty handling parameterized arc weights and a tropical geometry approach has been shown as a possible solution. The connection between the classical shortest path problem and tropical geometry is well establish: Tropically multiplying the n × n adjacency matrix of a graph with itself n − 1 times results in the so-called Kleene star, and is a matrix-form solution to the all-pairs shortest path problem. Michael Joswig and Benjamin Schröter showed in their paper The Tropical Geometry of Shortest Paths that the same method can be used to find the solution to the all-pairs shortest path problem even in the case of variable arc weights and they proposed an algorithm to solve the single-target shortest path problem in such a case. The solution takes the form of a polyhedral subdivision of the parameter space. As the number of variable arc weights grows, the time needed to execute an implementation of this algorithm grows exponentially. As the size of a public transportation network grows, the number of variable arc weights grows exponentially as well. However, it has been observed that in public transportation networks, there are usually only a few possible shortest routes. Geometrically, this means that there should be few polyhedra in the polyhedral subdivision. This algorithm is used on an example of a real-world public transportation network and an analysis of the polyhedral subdivision is made. Then a geometrical approach is used to analyze the impact of limiting the number of transfers, and thereby limiting the number of parameterized arcs used, as an estimation of the solution to the all-pairs shortest path problem Y1 - 2020 ER - TY - THES A1 - Masing, Berenike T1 - Optimal Line Planning in the Parametric City N2 - One of the fundamental steps in the optimization of public transport is line planning. It involves determining lines and assigning frequencies of service such that costs are minimized while also maximizing passenger comfort and satisfying travel demands. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer linear program that considers all circuit-like lines in a graph and allows free passenger routing. Traveler and operator costs are included in a linear scalarization in the objective. We apply said programming problem to the Parametric City, which is a graph model introduced by Fielbaum, Jara-Díaz and Gschwender that exibly represents different cities. In his dissertation, Fielbaum solved the line planning problem for various parameter choices in the Parametric City. In a first step, we therefore review his results and make comparative computations. Unlike Fielbaum we arrive at the conclusion that the optimal line plan for this model indeed depends on the demand. Consequently, we analyze the line planning problem in-depth: We find equivalent, but easier to compute formulations and provide a lower bound by LP-relaxation, which we show to be equivalent to a multi-commodity flow problem. Further, we examine what impact symmetry has on the solutions. Supported both by computational results as well as by theoretical analysis, we reach the conclusion that symmetric line plans are optimal or near-optimal in the Parametric City. Restricting the model to symmetric line plans allows for a \kappa-factor approximation algorithm for the line planning problem in the Parametric City. Y1 - 2020 ER - TY - THES A1 - Lange, Johanna T1 - A Decomposition and Dualization Approach to the Periodic Event Scheduling Problem N2 - Scheduling ist ein wichtiger Forschungsgegenstand im Bereich der diskreten Optimierung. Es geht darum, einen Schedule, d.h. einen Ablaufplan, für gegebene Ereignisse zu finden. Dieser soll optimal hinsichtlich einer Zielfunktion wie zum Beispiel minimaler Dauer oder Kosten sein. Dabei gibt es in der Regel Nebenbedingungen wie Vorrangbeziehungen zwischen den Ereignissen oder zeitliche Einschränkungen, die zu erfüllen sind. Falls die Ereignisse periodisch wiederkehren, spricht man von periodischem Scheduling. Beispiele sind das Erstellen von Zugfahrplänen, die Schaltungvon Ampelsignalen oder die Planung von Produktionsabläufen. Mathematisch können diese Probleme mit dem Periodic Event Scheduling Problem (PESP) modelliert werden, das als gemischt-ganzzahliges Programm formuliert werden kann. In dieser Bachelorarbeit wird ein Ansatz zur Lösung des PESP mittels Zerlegung und Dualisierung entwickelt. In den Kapiteln 2 und 3 werden zunächst die notwendigen graphentheoretischen Grundlagen und das PESP eingeführt. In Kapitel 4 wird das PESP durch Fixierung der ganzzahligen Variablen in lineare Programme zerlegt. Dieses Unterproblem wird dualisiert und wieder in das PESP eingesetzt. Dafür ist eine weitere Nebenbedingung nötig. Im fünften Kapitel behandeln wir die Lösung des teildualisierten PESP. Eine Möglichkeit ist es, sich auf eine Teilmenge der Nebenbedingungen zu beschränken. Eine weitere Möglichkeit ist ein Algorithmus, derähnlich wie BendersZerlegung die Nebenbedingungen dynamisch erzeugt. Dieser Algorithmus wird in Kapitel 6 implementiert und an vier Beispielen getestet. Y1 - 2021 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kühner, Arno T1 - Shortest Paths with Boolean Constraints N2 - For this thesis we study the Constrained Horizontal Flightplanning Problem (CHFPP) for which one has to find the path of minimum cost between airports s and t in a directed graph that respects a set of boolean constraints. To this end we give a survey of three different multilabel algorithms that all use a domination subroutine. We summarize an approach by Knudsen, Chiarandini and Larsen to define this domination and afterwards present our own method which builds on that approach. We suggest different implementation techniques to speed up the computation time, most notably a Reoptimization for an iterative method to solve the problem. Furthermore we implemented the different versions of the algorithm and present statistics on their computation as well as an overview of statistics on the set of real-world constraints that we were given. Finally we present two alternative approaches that tackle the problem, a heuristic with similarities to a Lagrangian relaxation and an approach that makes use of an algorithm which finds the k shortest path of a graph such as the ones of Epstein or Yen. Y1 - 2021 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Maristany de las Casas, Pedro A1 - Sedeno-Noda, Antonio A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf T1 - An Improved Multiobjective Shortest Path Algorithm N2 - We present a new label-setting algorithm for the Multiobjective Shortest Path (MOSP) problem that computes the minimal complete set of efficient paths for a given instance. The size of the priority queue used in the algorithm is bounded by the number of nodes in the input graph and extracted labels are guaranteed to be efficient. These properties allow us to give a tight output-sensitive running time bound for the new algorithm that can almost be expressed in terms of the running time of Dijkstra's algorithm for the Shortest Path problem. Hence, we suggest to call the algorithm \emph{Multiobjective Dijkstra Algorithm} (MDA). The simplified label management in the MDA allows us to parallelize some subroutines. In our computational experiments, we compare the MDA and the classical label-setting MOSP algorithm by Martins', which we improved using new data structures and pruning techniques. On average, the MDA is $\times2$ to $\times9$ times faster on all used graph types. On some instances the speedup reaches an order of magnitude. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-26 KW - Multiobjective Shortest Path Problem KW - Output-Sensitive Multiobjective Combinatorial Problems KW - Network Optimization Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-79712 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Prause, Felix A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Tesch, Alexander T1 - Approximating the RSRP with Predictive Maintenance N2 - We study the solution of the rolling stock rotation problem with predictive maintenance (RSRP-PM) by an iterative refinement approach that is based on a state-expanded event-graph. In this graph, the states are parameters of a failure distribution, and paths correspond to vehicle rotations with associated health state approximations. An optimal set of paths including maintenance can be computed by solving an integer linear program. Afterwards, the graph is refined and the procedure repeated. An associated linear program gives rise to a lower bound that can be used to determine the solution quality. Computational results for two instances derived from real world timetables of a German railway company are presented. The results show the effectiveness of the approach and the quality of the solutions. T3 - ZIB-Report - 23-04 KW - Rolling Stock Rotation Planning KW - Predictive Maintenance KW - Integer Linear Programming KW - Heuristic KW - Lower Bound Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-89531 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Prause, Felix T1 - A Multi-Swap Heuristic for Rolling Stock Rotation Planning with Predictive Maintenance N2 - We present a heuristic solution approach for the rolling stock rotation problem with predictive maintenance (RSRP-PdM). The task of this problem is to assign a sequence of trips to each of the vehicles and to schedule their maintenance such that all trips can be operated. Here, the health states of the vehicles are considered to be random variables distributed by a family of probability distribution functions, and the maintenance services should be scheduled based on the failure probability of the vehicles. The proposed algorithm first generates a solution by solving an integer linear program and then heuristically improves this solution by applying a local search procedure. For this purpose, the trips assigned to the vehicles are split up and recombined, whereby additional deadhead trips can be inserted between the partial assignments. Subse- quently, the maintenance is scheduled by solving a shortest path problem in a state-expanded version of a space-time graph restricted to the trips of the individual vehicles. The solution approach is tested and evaluated on a set of test instances based on real-world timetables. T3 - ZIB-Report - 23-29 KW - Rolling stock rotation planning KW - Predictive maintenance KW - Heuristic KW - State-expanded graph model KW - Integer linear program Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-93133 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Löbel, Fabian A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Electric Bus Scheduling with Non-Linear Charging, Power Grid Bottlenecks, and Dynamic Recharge Rates N2 - Public transport operators are gradually electrifying their bus fleets, predominantly with battery-powered drive trains. These buses commonly have to be scheduled to recharge in-service, which gives rise to a number of challenges. A major problem is that the relationship between charging time and replenished driving range is non-linear, which is often approximately modeled. We examine the associated approximation error and show how it can result in a gross over- or underestimation of the fleet size. Moreover, we demonstrate that commonly used piecewise linear underestimations of the charge curve do not result in an underestimation of the predicted charge states in electric vehicle scheduling and routing models. Furthermore, since power grid upgrades are currently not keeping up with an ever growing electricity demand, operators are introducing active charge management tools to dynamically adjust the charging speed depending on the amount of available energy. It is therefore imperative to extend electric bus scheduling models to account for these developments. We propose a novel mixed-integer programming formulation for the electric bus scheduling problem featuring an improved approximation of the non-linear battery charging behavior as well as dynamic recharge speeds to accommodate grid load limits. The idea is to linearly interpolate what we call the charge increment function, which is closely related to the derivative of the commonly used charge curve. This provides very good error control and integrates easily into integer programming models. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of our model on a diverse library of real-life instances. Y1 - 2024 ER -