19,261 research outputs found
An oil pipeline design problem
Copyright @ 2003 INFORMSWe consider a given set of offshore platforms and onshore wells producing known (or estimated) amounts of oil to be connected to a port. Connections may take place directly between platforms, well sites, and the port, or may go through connection points at given locations. The configuration of the network and sizes of pipes used must be chosen to minimize construction costs. This problem is expressed as a mixed-integer program, and solved both heuristically by Tabu Search and Variable Neighborhood Search methods and exactly by a branch-and-bound method. Two new types of valid inequalities are introduced. Tests are made with data from the South Gabon oil field and randomly generated problems.The work of the first author was supported by NSERC grant #OGP205041. The work of the second author was supported by FCAR (Fonds pour la Formation des Chercheurs et lâAide Ă la Recherche) grant #95-ER-1048, and NSERC grant #GP0105574
Structured learning of sum-of-submodular higher order energy functions
Submodular functions can be exactly minimized in polynomial time, and the
special case that graph cuts solve with max flow \cite{KZ:PAMI04} has had
significant impact in computer vision
\cite{BVZ:PAMI01,Kwatra:SIGGRAPH03,Rother:GrabCut04}. In this paper we address
the important class of sum-of-submodular (SoS) functions
\cite{Arora:ECCV12,Kolmogorov:DAM12}, which can be efficiently minimized via a
variant of max flow called submodular flow \cite{Edmonds:ADM77}. SoS functions
can naturally express higher order priors involving, e.g., local image patches;
however, it is difficult to fully exploit their expressive power because they
have so many parameters. Rather than trying to formulate existing higher order
priors as an SoS function, we take a discriminative learning approach,
effectively searching the space of SoS functions for a higher order prior that
performs well on our training set. We adopt a structural SVM approach
\cite{Joachims/etal/09a,Tsochantaridis/etal/04} and formulate the training
problem in terms of quadratic programming; as a result we can efficiently
search the space of SoS priors via an extended cutting-plane algorithm. We also
show how the state-of-the-art max flow method for vision problems
\cite{Goldberg:ESA11} can be modified to efficiently solve the submodular flow
problem. Experimental comparisons are made against the OpenCV implementation of
the GrabCut interactive segmentation technique \cite{Rother:GrabCut04}, which
uses hand-tuned parameters instead of machine learning. On a standard dataset
\cite{Gulshan:CVPR10} our method learns higher order priors with hundreds of
parameter values, and produces significantly better segmentations. While our
focus is on binary labeling problems, we show that our techniques can be
naturally generalized to handle more than two labels
Convex Relaxations for Gas Expansion Planning
Expansion of natural gas networks is a critical process involving substantial
capital expenditures with complex decision-support requirements. Given the
non-convex nature of gas transmission constraints, global optimality and
infeasibility guarantees can only be offered by global optimisation approaches.
Unfortunately, state-of-the-art global optimisation solvers are unable to scale
up to real-world size instances. In this study, we present a convex
mixed-integer second-order cone relaxation for the gas expansion planning
problem under steady-state conditions. The underlying model offers tight lower
bounds with high computational efficiency. In addition, the optimal solution of
the relaxation can often be used to derive high-quality solutions to the
original problem, leading to provably tight optimality gaps and, in some cases,
global optimal soluutions. The convex relaxation is based on a few key ideas,
including the introduction of flux direction variables, exact McCormick
relaxations, on/off constraints, and integer cuts. Numerical experiments are
conducted on the traditional Belgian gas network, as well as other real larger
networks. The results demonstrate both the accuracy and computational speed of
the relaxation and its ability to produce high-quality solutions
Synchronization-Aware and Algorithm-Efficient Chance Constrained Optimal Power Flow
One of the most common control decisions faced by power system operators is
the question of how to dispatch generation to meet demand for power. This is a
complex optimization problem that includes many nonlinear, non convex
constraints as well as inherent uncertainties about future demand for power and
available generation. In this paper we develop convex formulations to
appropriately model crucial classes of nonlinearities and stochastic effects.
We focus on solving a nonlinear optimal power flow (OPF) problem that includes
loss of synchrony constraints and models wind-farm caused fluctuations. In
particular, we develop (a) a convex formulation of the deterministic
phase-difference nonlinear Optimum Power Flow (OPF) problem; and (b) a
probabilistic chance constrained OPF for angular stability, thermal overloads
and generation limits that is computationally tractable.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
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