Publications

In this paper the compound work function algorithm for solving the generalized k-server problem is proposed. This problem is an online k-server problem with parallel requests where several servers can also be located on one point. In 1995 Koutsoupias and Papadimitriouhave proved that the well-known work function algorithm is competitive for the (usual) k-server problem. A proof, where a potential-like function argument is included, was given by Borodinand El-Yaniv in 1998. Unfortunately, certain techniques of these proofs cannot be applied to show that a natural generalization of the work function algorithm is competitive for the problem with parallel requests. Values of work functions, which are used by the compound work function algorithm are derived from a surrogate problem, where at most one server must be moved in servicing the request in each step. We can show that the compound work function algorithm is competitive with the same bound of the ratio as in the case of the usual problem.

In real life applications, optimization problems with more than one objective function are often of interest. Next to handling multiple objective functions, another challenge is to deal with uncertainties concerning the realization of the decision variables. One approach to handle these uncertainties is to consider the objectives as set-valued functions. Hence, the image of one decision variable is a whole set, which includes all possible outcomes of this decision variable. We choose a robust approach and thus these sets have to be compared using the so-called upper-type less order relation. We propose a numerical method to calculate a covering of the set of optimal solutions of such an uncertain multiobjective optimization problem. We use a branch-and-bound approach and lower and upper bound sets for being able to compare the arising sets. The calculation of these lower and upper bound sets uses techniques known from global optimization, as convex underestimators, as well as techniques used in convex multiobjective optimization as outer approximation techniques. We also give first numerical results for this algorithm.

Optimization problems with multiple objectives which are expensive, i.e., where function evaluations are time consuming, are difficult to solve. Finding at least one locally optimal solution is already a difficult task. In case only one of the objective functions is expensive while the others are cheap, for instance, analytically given, this can be used in the optimization procedure. Using a trust-region approach and the Tammer-Weidner-functional for finding descent directions, in [19] an algorithm was proposed which makes use of the heterogeneity of the objective functions. In this paper, we present three heuristic approaches, which allow to find additional optimal solutions of the multiobjective optimization problem and by that representations at least of parts of the Pareto front. We present the related theoretical results as well as numerical results on some test instances.

Set optimization with the set approach has recently gained increasing interest due to its practical relevance. In this problem class one studies optimization problems with a set-valued objective map and defines optimality based on a direct comparison of the images of the objective function, which are sets here. Meanwhile, in the literature a wide range of theoretical tools as scalarization approaches and derivative concepts as well as first numerical algorithms are available. These numerical algorithms require on the one hand test instances where the optimal solution sets are known. On the other hand, in most examples and test instances in the literature only set-valued maps with a very simple structure are used. We study in this paper such special set-valued maps and we show that some of them are such simple that they can equivalently be expressed as a vector optimization problem. Thus we try to start drawing a line between simple set-valued problems and such problems which have no representation as multiobjective problems. Those having a representation can be used for defining test instances for numerical algorithms with easy verifiable optimal solution set.

Multiobjective mixed integer convex optimization refers to mathematical programming problems where more than one convex objective function needs to be optimized simultaneously and some of the variables are constrained to take integer values. We present a branch-and-bound method based on the use of properly defined lower bounds. We do not simply rely on convex relaxations, but we built linear outer approximations of the image set in an adaptive way. We are able to guarantee correctness in terms of detecting both the efficient and the nondominated set of multiobjective mixed integer convex problems according to a prescribed precision. As far as we know, the procedure we present is the first deterministic algorithm devised to handle this class of problems. Our numerical experiments show results on biobjective and triobjective mixed integer convex instances.