Network flow algorithms and applications

This paper looks at several methods for solving network flow problems. The first chapter gives a brief background for linear programming (LP) problems. It includes basic definitions and theorems. The second chapter gives an overview of graph theory including definitions, theorems, and examples. Chapters 3-5 are the heart of this thesis. Chapter 3 includes algorithms and applications for maximum flow problems. It includes a look at a very important theorem. Maximum Flow/Minimum Cut Theorem. There is also a section on the Augmenting Path Algorithm. Chapter 4 Deals with shortest path problem. It includes Dijsksta\u27s Algorithm and the All-Pairs Labeling Algorithm. Chapter 5 includes information on algorithms and applications for the minimum cost flow(MCF)problem. The algorithms covered include the Cycle Canceling,Successive ShortestPath,and Primal-Dual Algorithms. Each of these chapters 3-5 contain definitions,theorems,and algorithms to solve network flow problems. Throughout the paper the computer program LINDO is used. It serves a couple of functions. First it is a way of checking each solution. The second use is to expose the reader to a very valuable tool in linear programming

Trade-Off Time: How Four States Continue to Deliver

Highlights performance measures used in Indiana, Maryland, Utah, and Virginia to ensure results-driven budgeting by defining goals, assessing priorities and trade-offs, targeting cuts with precision, and creating a culture of results-focused budgeting

Minimum Convex and Differentiable Cost Flow Problem with Time Windows

This paper presents a new version of the Minimum Cost Flow Problem (MCFP). This version is the Minimum Convex and Differentiable Cost Flow Problem with Time Windows (MCDCFPTW). Given a directed graph G=(V,A), where V is a set of vertices, A is a set of arcs. Each vertex i has a time-window [ai,bi] within which the vertex i may be visited with a non-negative service time ti where,ai<ti<bi. Each arc (i,j) is associated with thre

A Combinatorial Cut-Toggling Algorithm for Solving Laplacian Linear Systems

Over the last two decades, a significant line of work in theoretical algorithms has made progress in solving linear systems of the form ?? = ?, where ? is the Laplacian matrix of a weighted graph with weights w(i,j) > 0 on the edges. The solution ? of the linear system can be interpreted as the potentials of an electrical flow in which the resistance on edge (i,j) is 1/w(i,j). Kelner, Orrechia, Sidford, and Zhu [Kelner et al., 2013] give a combinatorial, near-linear time algorithm that maintains the Kirchoff Current Law, and gradually enforces the Kirchoff Potential Law by updating flows around cycles (cycle toggling). In this paper, we consider a dual version of the algorithm that maintains the Kirchoff Potential Law, and gradually enforces the Kirchoff Current Law by cut toggling: each iteration updates all potentials on one side of a fundamental cut of a spanning tree by the same amount. We prove that this dual algorithm also runs in a near-linear number of iterations. We show, however, that if we abstract cut toggling as a natural data structure problem, this problem can be reduced to the online vector-matrix-vector problem (OMv), which has been conjectured to be difficult for dynamic algorithms [Henzinger et al., 2015]. The conjecture implies that the data structure does not have an O(n^{1-?}) time algorithm for any ? > 0, and thus a straightforward implementation of the cut-toggling algorithm requires essentially linear time per iteration. To circumvent the lower bound, we batch update steps, and perform them simultaneously instead of sequentially. An appropriate choice of batching leads to an O?(m^{1.5}) time cut-toggling algorithm for solving Laplacian systems. Furthermore, we show that if we sparsify the graph and call our algorithm recursively on the Laplacian system implied by batching and sparsifying, we can reduce the running time to O(m^{1 + ?}) for any ? > 0. Thus, the dual cut-toggling algorithm can achieve (almost) the same running time as its primal cycle-toggling counterpart

Efficient Solution of Minimum Cost Flow Problems for Large-scale Transportation Networks

With the rapid advance of information technology in the transportation industry, of which intermodal transportation is one of the most important subfields, the scale and dimension of problem sizes and datasets is rising significantly. This trend raises the need for study on improving the efficiency, profitability and level of competitiveness of intermodal transportation networks while exploiting the rich information of big data related to these networks. Therefore, this dissertation aims to investigate intermodal transportation network design problems, especially practical optimization problems, and to develop more realistic and effective models and solution approaches that will assist network operators and/or decision makers of the intermodal transportation system. This dissertation focuses on developing a novel strategy for solving the Minimum Cost Flow (MCF) problem for large-scale network design problems by adopting a divide-and-conquer policy during the optimization process. The main contribution is the development of an agglomerative clustering based tiling strategy to significantly reduce the computational and peak memory consumption of the MCF model for large-scale networks. The tiling strategy is supported by the regional-division theorem and -approximation regional-division theorem that are proposed and proved in this dissertation. The region-division theorem is a sufficient condition to exactly guarantee the consistency between the local MCF solution of each sub-network obtained by the aforementioned tiling strategy and the global MCF solution of the whole network. Furthermore, the -approximation region-division theorem provides worst-case bounds, so that the practical approximation MCF solution closely approximates the optimal solution in terms of its optimal value. A series of experiments are performed to evaluate the utility of the proposed approach of solving the large-scale MCF problem. The results indicate that the proposed approach is beneficial to save the execution time and peak memory consumption in large-scale MCF problems under different circumstances

Combinatorial Optimization

This report summarizes the meeting on Combinatorial Optimization where new and promising developments in the field were discussed. Th

A polynomial time primal network simplex algorithm for minimum cost flows

Cover title.Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-27).Supported by ONR. N00014-94-1-0099 Supported in part by a grant from the UPS foundation.by James B. Orlin