The stochastic linear programming problem with recourse has a dual block angular structure. It can thus be handled by Benders decomposition or by Kelley's method of cutting planes; equivalently the dual problem has a primal block angular structure and can be handled by Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition--- the two approaches are in fact identical by duality. Here we shall investigate the use of the method of cutting planes from analytic centers applied to similar formulations. The only significant difference form the aforementioned methods is that new cutting planes (or columns, by duality) will be generated not from the optimum of the linear programming relaxation, but from the analytic center of the set of localization. 1 Introduction The study of optimization problems in the presence of uncertainty still taxes the limits of methodology and software. One of the most approachable settings is that of two-staged planning under uncertainty, in which a first stage decision has to be taken bef...

We present a survey of nondifferentiable optimization problems and methods with special focus on the analytic center cutting plane method. We propose a self-contained convergence analysis, that uses the formalism of the theory of self-concordant functions, but for the main results, we give direct proofs based on the properties of the logarithmic function. We also provide an in depth analysis of two extensions that are very relevant to practical problems: the case of multiple cuts and the case of deep cuts. We further examine extensions to problems including feasible sets partially described by an explicit barrier function, and to the case of nonlinear cuts. Finally, we review several implementation issues and discuss some applications.

Introduction We are concerned in this note with the Goffin Haurie and Vial's [7] Analytic Center Cutting Plane Method (ACCPM for short) for large-scale convex optimization. Its state-of-the-art implementation [10] is now available upon request for academic research use. Cutting plane methods for convex optimization have a long history that goes back at least to a fundamental paper of Kelley [14]. There exist numerous strategies that can be applied to "solve" subsequent relaxed master problems in the cutting planes optimization scheme. In the Analytic Center Cutting Plane Method, subsequent relaxed master problems are not solved to optimality. Instead of it, an approximate analytic center of the current localization set is looked for. The theoretical development of ACCPM started from Goffin and Vial [9]. It was later continued in [7, 8] and led to a development of the prototype implementation of the method due to du Merle [15] that was successfully applied to solve several nont

To minimize a convex function, we combine Moreau-Yosida regularizations, quasiNewton matrices and bundling mechanisms. First we develop conceptual forms using "reversal " quasi-Newton formulae and we state their global and local convergence. Then, to produce implementable versions, we incorporate a bundle strategy together with a "curve-search". No convergence results are given for the implementable versions; however some numerical illustrations show their good behaviour even for large-scale problems.

The paper deals with nonlinear multicommodity flow problems with convex costs. A decomposition method is proposed to solve them. The approach applies a potential reduction algorithm to solve the master problem approximately and a column generation technique to define a sequence of primal linear programming problems. Each subproblem consists of finding a minimum cost flow between an origin and a destination node in an uncapacited network. It is thus formulated as a shortest path problem and solved with the Dijkstra's d-heap algorithm. An implementation is described that that takes full advantage of the supersparsity of the network in the linear algebra operations. Computational results show the efficiency of this approach on well-known nondifferentiable problems and also large scale randomly generated problems (up to 1000 arcs and 5000 commodities). This research has been supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique Suisse, grant #12 \Gamma 34002:92, NSERC-Canada and ...

A practical warm-start procedure is described for the infeasible primal-dual interior-point method employed to solve the restricted master problem within the cutting-plane method. In contrast to the theoretical developments in this field, the approach presented in this paper does not make the unrealistic assumption that the new cuts are shallow. Moreover, it treats systematically the case when a large number of cuts are added at one time. The technique proposed in this paper has been implemented in the context of HOPDM, the state of the art, yet public domain, interior-point code. Numerical results confirm a high degree of efficiency of this approach: regardless of the number of cuts added at one time (can be thousands in the largest examples) and regardless of the depth of the new cuts, reoptimizations are usually done with a few additional iterations. Key words. Warm start, primal-dual algorithm, cutting-plane methods. Supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique Su...

: A power generation system comprising thermal and pumpedstorage hydro plants is considered. Two kinds of models for the cost-optimal generation of electric power under uncertain load are introduced: (i) a dynamic model for the short-term operation and (ii) a power production planning model. In both cases, the presence of stochastic data in the optimization model leads to multi-stage and two-stage stochastic programs, respectively. Both stochastic programming problems involve a large number of mixedinteger (stochastic) decisions, but their constraints are loosely coupled across operating power units. This is used to design Lagrangian relaxation methods for both models, which lead to a decomposition into stochastic single unit subproblems. For the dynamic model a Lagrangian decomposition based algorithm is described in more detail. Special emphasis is put on a discussion of the duality gap, the efficient solution of the multi-stage single unit subproblems and on solving the dual problem...

Re-optimization techniques for an interior point method applied to solve a sequence of linear programming problems are discussed. Conditions are given for problem perturbations that can be absorbed in merely one Newton step. The analysis is performed for both short-step and long-step feasible path-following method. A practical procedure is then derived for an infeasible path-following method. It is applied in the context of crash start for several large-scale structured linear programs. Numerical results with OOPS, the new object-oriented parallel solver demonstrate the efficiency of the approach. For large structured linear programs crash start leads to about 40% reduction of the iterations number and translates into 25% reduction of the solution time. The crash procedure parallelizes well and speed-ups between 3.1-3.8 on 4 processors are achieved.

Summary. Mathematical programming is a language for describing optimization problems; it is based on parameters, decision variables, objective function(s) subject to various types of constraints. The present treatment is concerned with the case when objective(s) and constraints are algebraic mathematical expressions of the parameters and decision variables, and therefore excludes optimization of black-box functions. A reformulation of a mathematical program P is a mathematical program Q obtained from P via symbolic transformations applied to the sets of variables, objectives and constraints. We present a survey of existing reformulations interpreted along these lines, some example applications, and describe the implementation of a software framework for reformulation and optimization. 1

We addres some of the issues that arise when an interior point method is used to handle the master problem in a decomposition approach. The main points concern the efficient exploitation of the special structure of the master problem to reduce the cost of a single interior point iteration. The particular structure is the presence of GUB constraints and the natural partitioning of the constraint matrix into blocks built of cuts generated by different subproblems. The method can be used in a fairly general case, i.e., in any decomposition approach whenever the master is solved by an interior point method in which the normal equations are used to compute orthogonal projections. Computational results demonstrate its advantages for one particular decomposition approach: Analytic Center Cutting Plane Method (ACCPM) is applied to solve large scale nonlinear multicommodity network flow problems (up to 5000 arcs and 10000 commodities). Key words. Convex programming, interior point methods, cutt...