The path player game: A network game from the point of view of the network providers

We introduce the path player game, a noncooperative network game with a continuum of mutually dependent set of strategies. This game models network flows from the point of view of competing network operators. The players are represented by paths in the network. They have to decide how much flow shall be routed along their paths. The competitive nature of the game is due to the following two aspects: First, a capacity bound on the overall network flow links the decisions of the players. Second, edges may be shared by several players which might have conflicting goals. In this paper, we prove the existence of feasible and pure-strategy equilibria in path player games, which is a non-trivial task due to non-continuity of payoff functions and the infinite, mutually dependent strategy sets. We analyze different instances of path player games in more detail and present characterizations of equilibria for these cases

Locating Two Transfer Points on a Network with a Trip Covering Criterion and Mixed Distances

In this paper we consider a set of origin-destination pairs in a mixed model in which a network embedded in the plane represents an alternative high-speed transportation system, and study a trip covering problem which consists on locating two points in the network which maximize the number of covered pairs, that is, the number of pairs which use the network by acceding and exiting through such points. To deal with the absence of convexity of this mixed distance function we propose a decomposition method based on formulating a collection of subproblems and solving each of them via discretization of the solution set.Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia e Innovación MTM2009-14243Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2012-37048Junta de Andalucía P09-TEP-5022Junta de Andalucía P10-FQM-584

A general approach for the location of transfer points on a network with a trip covering criterion and mixed distances

In this paper we consider a trip covering location model in a mixed planar-network space. An embed- ded network in the plane represents an alternative transportation system in which traveling is fasterthan traveling within the plane. We assume that the demand to be covered is given by a set of origin- destination pairs in the plane, with some traffic between them. An origin-destination pair is covered bytwo facility points on the network (or transfer points), if the travel time from the origin to destinationby using the network through such points is not higher than a given acceptance level related to the traveltime without using the network. The facility location problems studied in this work consist of locatingone or two transfer points on the network such that, under several objective functions, the traffic throughthe network is maximized. Due to the continuous nature of these problems, a general approach is pro- posed for discretizing them. Since the non-convexity of the distance function on cyclic networks alsoimplies the absence of convexity of the mixed distance function, such an approach is based on a decom- position process which leads to a collection of subproblems whose solution set can be found by adaptingthe general strategy to each problem considered.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2012-37048Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2015-67706-PJunta de Andalucía P10-FQM-584

Delay management including capacities of stations

The question of delay management (DM) is whether trains should wait for delayed feeder trains or should depart on time. Solutions to this problem strongly depend on the capacity constraints of the tracks making sure that no two trains can use the same piece of track at the same time. While these capacity constraints have been included in integer programming formulations for DM, the capacity constraints of the stations (only offering a limited number of platforms) have been neglected so far. This can lead to highly infeasible solutions. In order to overcome this problem we suggest two new formulations for DM both including the stations' capacities. We present numerical results showing that the assignment-based formulation is clearly superior to the packing formulation. We furthermore propose an iterative algorithm in which we improve the platform assignment with respect to the current delays of the trains at each station in each step. We will show that this subproblem asks for coloring the nodes of a graph with a given number of colors while minimizing the weight of the conflicts. We show that the graph to be colored is an interval graph and that the problem can be solved in polynomial time by presenting a totally unimodular IP formulation

Decision uncertainty in multiobjective optimization

In many real-world optimization problems, a solution cannot be realized in practice exactly as computed, e.g., it may be impossible to produce a board of exactly 3.546~mm width. Whenever computed solutions are not realized exactly but in a perturbed way, we speak of decision uncertainty. We study decision uncertainty in multiobjective optimization problems and we propose the concept decision robust efficiency for evaluating the robustness of a solution in this case. Therefore, we address decision uncertainty within the framework of set-valued maps. First, we prove that convexity and continuity are preserved by the resulting set-valued mappings. Second, we obtain specific results for particular classes of objective functions that are relevant for solving the set-valued problem. We furthermore prove that decision robust efficient solutions can be found by solving a deterministic problem in case of linear objective functions. We also investigate the relationship of the proposed concept to other concepts in the literature