Robust optimization provides a mathematical framework for modeling and solving decision-making problems under worst-case uncertainty.  This work addresses two-stage robust optimization (2RO) problems (also called adjustable robust optimization), wherein first-stage and second-stage decisions are made before and after uncertainty is realized, respectively.  This results in a nested min-max-min optimization problem which is extremely challenging computationally, especially when the decisions are discrete.  We propose Neur2RO, an efficient machine learning-driven instantiation of column-and-constraint generation (CCG), a classical iterative algorithm for 2RO.  Specifically, we learn to estimate the value function of the second-stage problem via a novel neural network architecture that is easy to optimize over by design. Embedding our neural network into CCG yields high-quality solutions quickly as evidenced by experiments on two 2RO benchmarks, knapsack and capital budgeting. On small or easy instances, Neur2RO recovers solutions of nearly the same quality as state-of-the-art methods but is most advantageous on large-scale instances, where it finds better solutions on average.
Neur2RO: Neural Two-Stage Robust Optimization
Justin Dumouchelle Esther Julien Jannis Kurtz Elias Boutros Khalil