SpringerBriefs in Optimization – serie

This work encapsulates the essential developments in this field into a single resource, as well as to set an agenda for further development in the field. This brief focuses on the demand flexibility in supply chains with fragmented results distributed throughout the literature. These results have strong implications for managing real-world complex operations planning problems.This book exploits dimensions of demand flexibility in supply chains and characterizes the best fit between demand properties and operations capabilities and constraints. The origins and seminal works are traced in integrated demand and operations planning and an in-depth documentation is provided for the current state of the art. Systems with inherent costs and constraints that must respond to some set of demands at a minimum cost are examined.  Crucial unanswered questions are explored and the high-value research directions  are highlighted for both practice and for the development of new and interesting optimization models and algorithms.

Data uncertainty is a concept closely related with most real life applications that involve data collection and interpretation. Examples can be found in data acquired with biomedical instruments or other experimental techniques. Integration of robust optimization in the existing data mining techniques aim to create new algorithms resilient to error and noise.This work encapsulates all the latest applications of robust optimization in data mining. This brief contains an overview of the rapidly growing field of robust data mining research field and presents  the most well known machine learning algorithms, their robust counterpart formulations and algorithms for attacking these problems. This brief will appeal to theoreticians and data miners working in this field.

Group Testing Theory in Network Security explores a new branch of group testing theory with an application which enhances research results in network security. This brief presents new solutions on several advanced network security problems and mathematical frameworks based on the group testing theory, specifically denial-of-service and jamming attacks. A new application of group testing, illustrated in this text, requires additional theories, such as size constraint group testing and connected group testing. Included in this text is a chapter devoted to discussing open problems and suggesting new solutions for various network security problems. This text also exemplifies the connection between mathematical approaches and practical applications to group testing theory in network security. This work will appeal to a multidisciplinary audience with interests in computer communication networks, optimization, and engineering.

Polynomial optimization have been a hot research topic for the past few years and its applications range from Operations Research, biomedical engineering, investment science, to quantum mechanics, linear algebra, and signal processing, among many others. In this brief the authors discuss some important subclasses of polynomial optimization models arising from various applications, with a focus on approximations algorithms with guaranteed worst case performance analysis. The brief presents a clear view of the basic ideas underlying the design of such algorithms and the benefits are highlighted by illustrative examples showing the possible applications. This timely treatise will appeal to researchers and graduate students in the fields of optimization, computational mathematics, Operations Research, industrial engineering, and computer science.

​​​​​​​This brief provides an elementary introduction to the theory of piecewise differentiable functions with an emphasis on differentiable equations.  In the first chapter, two sample problems are used to motivate the study of this theory. The presentation is then developed using two basic tools for the analysis of piecewise differentiable functions: the Bouligand derivative as the nonsmooth analogue of the classical derivative concept and the theory of piecewise affine functions as the combinatorial tool for the study of this approximation function. In the end, the results are combined to develop inverse and implicit function theorems for piecewise differentiable equations.  This Introduction to Piecewise Differentiable Equations will serve graduate students and researchers alike. The reader is assumed to be familiar with basic mathematical analysis and to have some familiarity with polyhedral theory.

Evidenced by the success of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, online social networks (OSNs) have become ubiquitous, offering novel ways for people to access information and communicate with each other. As the increasing popularity of social networking is undeniable, scalability is an important issue for any OSN that wants to serve a large number of users. Storing user data for the entire network on a single server can quickly lead to a bottleneck, and, consequently, more servers are needed to expand storage capacity and lower data request traffic per server. Adding more servers is just one step to address scalability. The next step is to determine how best to store the data across multiple servers. This problem has been widely-studied in the literature of distributed and database systems. OSNs, however, represent a different class of data systems. When a user spends time on a social network, the data mostly requested is her own and that of her friends; e.g., in Facebook or Twitter, these data are the status updates posted by herself as well as that posted by the friends. This so-called social locality should be taken into account when determining the server locations to store these data, so that when a user issues a read request, all its relevant data can be returned quickly and efficiently. Social locality is not a design factor in traditional storage systems where data requests are always processed independently. Even for today’s OSNs, social locality is not yet considered in their data partition schemes. These schemes rely on  distributed hash tables (DHT), using consistent hashing to assign the users’ data to the servers. The random nature of DHT leads to weak social locality which has been shown to result in poor performance under heavy request loads. Data Storage for Social Networks: A Socially Aware Approach is aimed at reviewing the current literature of data storage for online social networks and discussing newmethods that take into account social awareness in designing efficient data storage.

​​​​​​Stationarity and Convergence in Reduce-or-Retreat Minimization presents and analyzes a unifying framework for a wide variety of numerical methods in optimization. The author’s “reduce-or-retreat” framework is a conceptual method-outline that covers any method whose iterations choose between reducing the objective in some way at a trial point, or retreating to a closer set of trial points. The alignment of various derivative-based methods within the same framework encourages the construction of new methods, and inspires new theoretical developments as companions to results from across traditional divides. The text illustrates the former by developing two generalizations of classic derivative-based methods which accommodate non-smooth objectives, and the latter by analyzing these two methods in detail along with a pattern-search method and the famous Nelder-Mead method.In addition to providing a bridge for theory through the “reduce-or-retreat” framework, this monograph extends and broadens the traditional convergence analyses in several ways. Levy develops a generalized notion of approaching stationarity which applies to non-smooth objectives, and explores the roles of the descent and non-degeneracy conditions in establishing this property. The traditional analysis is broadened by considering “situational” convergence of different elements computed at each iteration of a reduce-or-retreat method. The “reduce-or-retreat” framework described in this text covers specialized minimization methods, some general methods for minimization and a direct search method, while providing convergence analysis which complements and expands existing results.​ ​

​​Linear-Quadratic Controls in Risk-Averse Decision Making   cuts across control engineering (control feedback and decision optimization) and statistics (post-design performance analysis) with a common theme: reliability increase seen from the responsive angle of incorporating and engineering multi-level performance robustness beyond the long-run average performance into control feedback design and decision making and complex dynamic systems from the start. This monograph provides a complete description of statistical optimal control (also known as cost-cumulant control) theory. In control problems and topics, emphasis is primarily placed on major developments attained and explicit connections between mathematical statistics of performance appraisals and decision and control optimization. Chapter summaries shed light on the relevance of developed results, which makes this monograph suitable for graduate-level lectures in applied mathematics and electrical engineering with systems-theoretic concentration, elective study or a reference for interested readers, researchers, and graduate students who are interested in theoretical constructs and design principles for stochastic controlled systems.​

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Data Correcting Approaches in Combinatorial Optimization focuses on algorithmic applications of the well known polynomially solvable special cases of computationally intractable problems. The purpose of this text is to design practically efficient algorithms for solving wide classes of combinatorial optimization problems.  Researches, students and engineers will benefit from new bounds and branching rules in development efficient branch-and-bound type computational algorithms. This book examines applications for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem and its variations, Maximum Weight Independent Set Problem, Different Classes of Allocation and Cluster Analysis  as well as some classes of Scheduling Problems. Data Correcting Algorithms in Combinatorial Optimization  introduces the data correcting approach to algorithms which provide an answer to the following questions: how to construct a bound to the original intractable problem and find which element of the corrected instance  one should branch such that the total size of search tree will be minimized. The PC time needed for solving intractable problems will be adjusted with the requirements for solving real world problems.​

Despite significant achievements, thediscipline of supply chain management is still unable to satisfactorily handlemany practical real-world challenges.  The authors of Networks AgainstTime claim that a unified supply chain network analytics framework isneeded which should be able to handle optimization and competitive behaviorwhile also maintain relevance to many industrial sectors in which perishableproducts are prominent, from healthcare to food and from fashion apparel totechnology. ThisBrief provides a wide range of critical supply chain problems which aremodeled as generalized networks. Guidelines are provided to determine the arcmultipliers that capture perish ability of the product whether food,radioisotopes, or even highly perishable blood in healthcare over space andtime. Through case studies the authors portray the application of the modelsand algorithms to real-world sectors which illustrate the power of theframework in practice. The models and algorithms are fully described along withthe input and output data in the case studies. This level of transparency isuseful pedagogically as well as for future research and for applications inpractice.Researchersand practitioners in mathematics, in operations research and managementscience, operations management, as well as in economics and computer sciencewill find this book useful to gain a broader appreciation of the richness ofnetwork supply chain structures, processes, and applications. This book canalso be used by advanced undergraduate students and graduate students in thedisciplines noted above to familiarize themselves with methodologies and supplychain network models and applications.​​

​Structure of Solutions of Variational Problems is devoted to recent progress made in the studies of the structure of approximate solutions of variational problems considered on subintervals of a real line.  Results on properties of approximate solutions which are independent of the length of the interval, for all sufficiently large intervals are presented in a clear manner. Solutions, new approaches, techniques and methods to a number of difficult problems in the calculus of variations  are illustrated throughout this book. This book also contains significant results and information about the turnpike property of the variational problems. This well-known property is a general phenomenon which holds for large classes of variational problems. The author examines the following in relation to the turnpike property  in individual  (non-generic) turnpike results, sufficient and necessary conditions for the turnpike phenomenon as well as in the non-intersection property for extremals of variational problems. This book appeals to mathematicians  working in optimal control and the calculus as  well as with graduate students.​​​

Introduction to Global Optimization Exploiting Space-Filling Curves provides an overview of classical and new results pertaining to the usage of space-filling curves in global optimization.  The authors look at a family of derivative-free numerical algorithms applying space-filling curves to reduce the dimensionality of the global optimization problem; along with a number of unconventional ideas, such as adaptive strategies for estimating Lipschitz constant, balancing global and local information to accelerate the search. Convergence conditions of the described algorithms are studied in depth and theoretical considerations are illustrated through numerical examples. This work also contains a code for implementing space-filling curves that can be used for constructing new global optimization algorithms. Basic ideas from this text can be applied to a number of problems including problems with multiextremal and partially defined constraints and non-redundant parallel computations can be organized. Professors, students, researchers, engineers, and other professionals in the fields of pure mathematics, nonlinear sciences studying fractals, operations research, management science, industrial and applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, economics, and the environmental sciences will find this title useful .  ​

Topics in Matroid Theory provides a brief introduction to matroid theory with an emphasis on algorithmic consequences.Matroid theory is at the heart of combinatorial optimization and has attracted various pioneers such as Edmonds, Tutte, Cunningham and Lawler among others. Matroid theory encompasses matrices, graphs and other combinatorial entities under a common, solid algebraic framework, thereby providing the analytical tools to solve related difficult algorithmic problems. The monograph contains a rigorous axiomatic definition of matroids along with other necessary concepts such as duality, minors, connectivity and representability as demonstrated in matrices, graphs and transversals. The author also presents a deep decomposition result in matroid theory that provides  a structural characterization of graphic matroids, and show how this can be extended to signed-graphic matroids, as well as the immediate algorithmic consequences.

​​​​In this book the authors take a rigorous look at the infinite-horizon discrete-time optimal control theory from the viewpoint of Pontryagin’s principles. Several Pontryagin principles  are described which govern systems and various criteria which define the notions of optimality, along with a detailed analysis of how each Pontryagin principle relate to each other. The Pontryagin principle is examined in a stochastic setting and results are given which generalize Pontryagin’s principles to multi-criteria problems. ​Infinite-Horizon Optimal Control in the Discrete-Time Framework  is aimed toward researchers and PhD students in various scientific fields such as mathematics, applied mathematics, economics, management, sustainable development (such as, of fisheries and of forests), and  Bio-medical sciences who are drawn to infinite-horizon discrete-time optimal control problems.

Optimization Approaches for Solving String Selection Problems provides an overview of optimization methods for a wide class of genomics-related problems in relation to the string selection problems. This class of problems addresses the recognition of similar characteristics or differences within biological sequences. Specifically, this book considers a large class of problems, ranging from the closest string and substring problems, to the farthest string and substring problems, to the far from most string problem. Each problem includes a detailed description, highlighting both biological and mathematical features and presents state-of-the-art approaches.This Brief provides a quick  introduction of optimization methods for string selection problems for young scientists and a detailed description of the mathematical and computational methods developed for experts in the field of optimization who want to deepen their understanding of the string selection problems. Researchers, practitioners and graduate students in the field of Computer Science, Operation Research, Mathematics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine will find this book useful. ​

Simplicial Global Optimization is centered on deterministic covering methods partitioning feasible region by simplices. This book looks into the advantages of simplicial partitioning in global optimization through applications where the search space may be significantly reduced while taking into account symmetries of the objective function by setting linear inequality constraints that are managed by initial partitioning. The authors provide an extensive experimental investigation and illustrates the impact of various bounds, types of subdivision, strategies of candidate selection on the performance of algorithms. A comparison of various Lipschitz bounds over simplices and an extension of Lipschitz global optimization with-out the Lipschitz constant to the case of simplicial partitioning is also depicted in this text. Applications benefiting from simplicial partitioning are examined in detail such as nonlinear least squares regression and pile placement optimization in grillage-type foundations. Researchers and engineers will benefit from simplicial partitioning algorithms such as Lipschitz branch and bound, Lipschitz optimization without the Lipschitz constant, heuristic partitioning presented. This book will leave readers inspired to develop simplicial versions of other algorithms for global optimization and even use other non-rectangular partitions for special applications.

Post-Optimal Analysis in Linear Semi-Infinite Optimization examines the following topics in regards to linear semi-infinite optimization: modeling uncertainty, qualitative stability analysis, quantitative stability analysis and sensitivity analysis. Linear semi-infinite optimization (LSIO) deals with linear optimization problems where the dimension of the decision space or the number of constraints is infinite. The authors compare the post-optimal analysis with alternative approaches to uncertain LSIO problems and provide readers with criteria to choose the best way to model a given uncertain LSIO problem depending on the nature and quality of the data along with the available software. This work also contains open problems which readers will find intriguing a challenging. Post-Optimal Analysis in Linear Semi-Infinite Optimization is aimed toward researchers, graduate and post-graduate students of mathematics interested in optimization, parametric optimization and related topics.

On-orbit operations optimization among multiple cooperative or noncooperative spacecraft, which is often challenged by tight constraints and shifting parameters, has grown to be a hot issue in recent years. The authors of this book summarize related optimization problems into four planning categories: spacecraft multi-mission planning, far-range orbital maneuver planning, proximity relative motion planning and multi-spacecraft coordinated planning. The authors then formulate models, introduce optimization methods, and investigate simulation cases that address problems in these four categories. This text will serve as a quick reference for engineers, graduate students, postgraduates in the fields of optimization research and on-orbit operation mission planning.

This book presents the details of the BONUS algorithm and its real world applications in areas like sensor placement in large scale drinking water networks, sensor placement in advanced power systems, water management in power systems, and capacity expansion of energy systems. A generalized method for stochastic nonlinear programming based on a sampling based approach for uncertainty analysis and statistical reweighting to obtain probability information is demonstrated in this book. Stochastic optimization problems are difficult to solve since they involve dealing with optimization and uncertainty loops. There are two fundamental approaches used to solve such problems. The first being the decomposition techniques and the second method identifies problem specific structures and transforms the problem into a deterministic nonlinear programming problem. These techniques have significant limitations on either the objective function type or the underlying distributions for the uncertain variables. Moreover, these methods assume that there are a small number of scenarios to be evaluated for calculation of the probabilistic objective function and constraints. This book begins to tackle these issues by describing a generalized method for stochastic nonlinear programming problems. This title is best suited for practitioners, researchers and students in engineering, operations research, and management science who desire a complete understanding of the BONUS algorithm and its applications to the real world.

This book begins with a concentrated introduction into deterministic global optimization and moves forward to present new original results from the authors who are well known experts in the field. Multiextremal continuous problems that have an unknown structure with Lipschitz objective functions and functions having the first Lipschitz derivatives defined over hyperintervals are examined. A class of algorithms using several Lipschitz constants is introduced which has its origins in the DIRECT (DIviding RECTangles) method. This new class is based on an efficient strategy that is applied for the search domain partitioning. In addition a survey on derivative free methods and methods using the first derivatives is given for both one-dimensional and multi-dimensional cases. Non-smooth and smooth minorants and acceleration techniques that can speed up several classes of global optimization methods with examples of applications and problems arising in numerical testing of global optimizationalgorithms are discussed. Theoretical considerations are illustrated through engineering applications. Extensive numerical testing of algorithms described in this book stretches the likelihood of establishing a link between mathematicians and practitioners. The authors conclude by describing applications and a generator of random classes of test functions with known local and global minima that is used in more than 40 countries of the world. This title serves as a starting point for students, researchers, engineers, and other professionals in operations research, management science, computer science, engineering, economics, environmental sciences, industrial and applied mathematics to obtain an overview of deterministic global optimization.

This book explores the updated version of the GLOBAL algorithm which contains improvements for a local search algorithm and new Java implementations. Efficiency comparisons to earlier versions and on the increased speed achieved by the parallelization, are detailed. Examples are provided for students as well as researchers and practitioners in optimization, operations research, and mathematics to compose their own scripts with ease. A GLOBAL manual is presented in the appendix to assist new users with modules and test functions.  GLOBAL is a successful stochastic multistart global optimization algorithm that has passed several computational tests, and is efficient and reliable for small to medium dimensional global optimization problems. The algorithm uses clustering to ensure efficiency and is modular in regard to the two local search methods it starts with, but it can also easily apply other local techniques. The strength of this algorithm lies in its reliability and adaptive algorithm parameters. The GLOBAL algorithm is free to download also in the earlier Fortran, C, and MATLAB implementations.

Numerical minimization of an objective function is analyzed in this book to understand solution algorithms for optimization problems. Multiset-mappings are introduced to engineer numerical minimization as a repeated application of an iteration mapping. Ideas from numerical variational analysis are extended to define and explore notions of continuity and differentiability of multiset-mappings, and prove a fixed-point theorem for iteration mappings. Concepts from dynamical systems are utilized to develop notions of basin size and basin entropy.  Simulations to estimate basins of attraction, to measure and classify basin size, and to compute basin are included to shed new light on convergence behavior in numerical minimization.Graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in optimization and mathematics who work theoretically to develop solution algorithms will find this book a useful resource.

This book presents a systematic approach to analyze nature-inspired algorithms. Beginning with an introduction to optimization methods and algorithms, this book moves on to provide a unified framework of mathematical analysis for convergence and stability. Specific nature-inspired algorithms include: swarm intelligence, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, bee-inspired algorithms, bat algorithm, firefly algorithm, and cuckoo search. Algorithms are analyzed from a wide spectrum of theories and frameworks to offer insight to the main characteristics of algorithms and understand how and why they work for solving optimization problems. In-depth mathematical analyses are carried out for different perspectives, including complexity theory, fixed point theory, dynamical systems, self-organization, Bayesian framework, Markov chain framework, filter theory, statistical learning, and statistical measures. Students and researchers in optimization, operations research, artificial intelligence, data mining, machine learning, computer science, and management sciences will see the pros and cons of a variety of algorithms through detailed examples and a comparison of algorithms.

This book is devoted to the study of optimal control problems arising in forest management, an important and fascinating topic in mathematical economics studied by many researchers over the years. The volume studies the forest management problem by analyzing a class of optimal control problems that contains it and showing the existence of optimal solutions over infinite horizon. It also studies the structure of approximate solutions on finite intervals and their turnpike properties, as well as the stability of the turnpike phenomenon and the structure of approximate solutions on finite intervals in the regions close to the end points. The book is intended for mathematicians interested in the optimization theory, optimal control and their applications to the economic theory.

This volume brings together the main results in the field of Bayesian Optimization (BO), focusing on the last ten years and showing how, on the basic framework, new methods have been specialized to solve emerging problems from machine learning, artificial intelligence, and system optimization. It also analyzes the software resources available for BO and a few selected application areas. Some areas for which new results are shown include constrained optimization, safe optimization, and applied mathematics, specifically BO's use in solving difficult nonlinear mixed integer problems. The book will help bring readers to a full understanding of the basic Bayesian Optimization framework and gain an appreciation of its potential for emerging application areas. It will be of particular interest to the data science, computer science, optimization, and engineering communities.

This self-contained book describes social influence from a computational point of view, with a focus on recent and practical applications, models, algorithms and open topics for future research. Researchers, scholars, postgraduates and developers interested in research on social networking and the social influence related issues will find this book useful and motivating. The latest research on social computing is presented along with and illustrations on how to understand and manipulate social influence for knowledge discovery by applying various data mining techniques in real world scenarios. Experimental reports, survey papers, models and algorithms with specific optimization problems are depicted. The main topics covered in this book are: chrematistics of social networks, modeling of social influence propagation, popular research problems in social influence analysis such as influence maximization, rumor blocking, rumor source detection, and multiple social influence competing.

This book studies complex systems with elements represented by random variables. Its main goal is to study and compare uncertainty of algorithms of network structure identification with applications to market network analysis. For this, a mathematical model of random variable network is introduced, uncertainty of identification procedure is defined through a risk function, random variables networks with different measures of similarity (dependence) are discussed, and general statistical properties of identification algorithms are studied. The volume also introduces a new class of identification algorithms based on a new measure of similarity and prove its robustness in a large class of distributions, and presents applications to social networks, power transmission grids, telecommunication networks, stock market networks, and brain networks through a theoretical analysis that identifies network structures. Both researchers and graduate students in computer science, mathematics, and optimization will find the applications and techniques presented useful.

This focused monograph presents a study of subgradient algorithms for constrained minimization problems in a Hilbert space. The book is of interest for experts in applications of optimization  to engineering and economics. The goal is to obtain a good approximate solution of the problem in the presence of computational errors. The discussion takes into consideration the fact that for every algorithm its iteration consists of several steps and that computational errors for different steps are different, in general.  The book is especially useful for the reader because it contains solutions to a number of difficult and interesting problems in the numerical optimization.  The subgradient  projection algorithm is one of the most important tools in optimization theory and its applications. An optimization  problem is described by an objective function and a set of feasible points. For this algorithm each iteration consists of two steps. The first step requires a calculation of a subgradient of the objective function; the second requires a calculation of a projection on the feasible set. The computational errors in each of these two steps are different.  This book shows that the algorithm discussed, generates a good approximate solution, if all the computational errors are bounded from above by a small positive constant. Moreover, if computational errors for the two steps of the algorithm are known, one discovers an approximate solution and how many iterations one needs for this.  In addition to their mathematical interest, the generalizations considered in this book have a significant practical meaning.

The theory presented in this work merges many concepts from mathematical optimization and real algebraic geometry. When unknown or uncertain data in an optimization problem is replaced with parameters, one obtains a multi-parametric optimization problem whose optimal solution comes in the form of a function of the parameters.The theory and methodology presented in this work allows one to solve both Linear Programs and convex Quadratic Programs containing parameters in any location within the problem data as well as multi-objective optimization problems with any number of convex quadratic or linear objectives and linear constraints. Applications of these classes of problems are extremely widespread, ranging from business and economics to chemical and environmental engineering. Prior to this work, no solution procedure existed for these general classes of problems except for the recently proposed algorithms