Heuristic methods in stochastic network design
(LANCS project-Heuristic Understanding)
With Stein W. Wallace
This project is part of a cooperation with Teodor Gabriel Crainic and Walter Rei (University of Québec at Montreal), Michel Gendreau (University of Montreal) and Michal Kaut (Norwegian University of Science and Technology).
Stochastic network design problems are very hard to solve. Exact methods can only handle tiny cases. So heuristics are certainly necessary. Many search methods are blind. All sorts of idea are applied and some turn out to work, some not. The advantage of these general methods is that they can fairly easily be tested on the problem at hand, in the sense that the general framework is in place from earlier problems.
This project walks down a different path. The idea here is to study very small cases (as anything else is unsolvable) to understand the structure of the optimal designs. Heuristics are then developed based on this structural understanding. So the project involves both the study of optimal solutions and the development of heuristics, but with a focus on the latter.
Programming skills are needed.
Return to the Optimisation Research Centre page.
