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Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multi-dimensional weights are useful to analyze systems with multiple objectives that may be conflicting and require the analysis of trade-offs. We study the complexity of percentile queries in such…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2016-12-08 Mickael Randour , Jean-François Raskin , Ocan Sankur

Markov decision process (MDP) is a decision making framework where a decision maker is interested in maximizing the expected discounted value of a stream of rewards received at future stages at various states which are visited according to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-12-19 Hoang Nam Nguyen , Abdel Lisser , Vikas Vikram Singh

In this paper, we consider algorithms to decide the existence of strategies in MDPs for Boolean combinations of objectives. These objectives are omega-regular properties that need to be enforced either surely, almost surely, existentially,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-04-30 Raphaël Berthon , Shibashis Guha , Jean-François Raskin

The paper addresses two variants of the stochastic shortest path problem ('optimize the accumulated weight until reaching a goal state') in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with integer weights. The first variant optimizes partial expected…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-05-01 Jakob Piribauer , Christel Baier

We consider Markov decision processes (MDP) as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in a single state, or in a given set of…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-03-28 Laurent Doyen , Thierry Massart , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

Robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs) extend standard Markov decision processes (MDPs) to account for uncertainty in the transition probabilities. RMDPs have an uncertainty set that defines a set of possible transition functions, each of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Marnix Suilen , Guillermo A. Pérez

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and every transition is associated with an integer cost. The optimization objective we study asks to minimize the expected total cost till the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-11-17 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Raghav Gupta , Ayush Kanodia

This note describes sufficient conditions under which total-cost and average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) with general state and action spaces, and with weakly continuous transition probabilities, can be reduced to discounted MDPs.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-21 Eugene A. Feinberg , Jefferson Huang

A labelled Markov decision process (MDP) is a labelled Markov chain with nondeterminism; i.e., together with a strategy a labelled MDP induces a labelled Markov chain. The model is related to interval Markov chains. Motivated by…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-01 Stefan Kiefer , Qiyi Tang

Value iteration is a fundamental algorithm for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). It computes the maximal $n$-step payoff by iterating $n$ times a recurrence equation which is naturally associated to the MDP. At the same time, value…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-04-30 Nikhil Balaji , Stefan Kiefer , Petr Novotný , Guillermo A. Pérez , Mahsa Shirmohammadi

We consider the linear programming approach for constrained and unconstrained Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the long-run average cost criterion, where the class of MDPs in our study have Borel state spaces and discrete countable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-20 Huizhen Yu

We consider multiple-environment Markov decision processes (MEMDP), which consist of a finite set of MDPs over the same state space, representing different scenarios of transition structure and probability. The value of a strategy is the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-04-23 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Laurent Doyen , Jean-François Raskin , Ocan Sankur

We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Shuchi Chawla , Dimitris Christou , Amit Harlev , Ziv Scully

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns

We prove new upper and lower bounds for sample complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of an infinite-horizon average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) given access to a generative model. When the mixing time of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Yujia Jin , Aaron Sidford

Parametric Markov chains have been introduced as a model for families of stochastic systems that rely on the same graph structure, but differ in the concrete transition probabilities. The latter are specified by polynomial constraints for…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-09-08 Lisa Hutschenreiter , Christel Baier , Joachim Klein

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a popular class of models suitable for solving control decision problems in probabilistic reactive systems. We consider parametric MDPs (pMDPs) that include parameters in some of the transition…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-06-14 Sebastian Arming , Ezio Bartocci , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Ana Sokolova

We consider the problem: is the optimal expected total reward to reach a goal state in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) below a given threshold? We tackle this -- generally undecidable -- problem by computing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-01-24 Alexander Bork , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Tim Quatmann

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model for decision making under uncertainty. They exhibit non-deterministic choice as well as probabilistic uncertainty. Traditionally, verification algorithms assume exact knowledge of the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-18 Tobias Meggendorfer , Maximilian Weininger , Patrick Wienhöft

We are interested in risk constraints for infinite horizon discrete time Markov decision processes (MDPs). Starting with average reward MDPs, we show that increasing concave stochastic dominance constraints on the empirical distribution of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-06-21 William B. Haskell , Rahul Jain