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Related papers: Robust decision-making under risk and ambiguity

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We study stochastic programs where the decision-maker cannot observe the distribution of the exogenous uncertainties but has access to a finite set of independent samples from this distribution. In this setting, the goal is to find a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-24 Bart P. G. Van Parys , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Daniel Kuhn

In order for reinforcement learning techniques to be useful in real-world decision making processes, they must be able to produce robust performance from limited data. Deep policy optimization methods have achieved impressive results on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-22 James Queeney , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis , Christos G. Cassandras

We adopt the statistical framework on robustness proposed by Watson and Holmes in 2016 and then tackle the practical challenges that hinder its applicability to network models. The goal is to evaluate how the quality of an inference for a…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-08 Marios Papamichalis , Simon Lunagomez , Patrick J. Wolfe

In this article we present a general framework for non-concave robust stochastic control problems under model uncertainty in a discrete time finite horizon setting. Our framework allows to consider a variety of different path-dependent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-06 Ariel Neufeld , Julian Sester

Existing approaches of prescriptive analytics -- where inputs of an optimization model can be predicted by leveraging covariates in a machine learning model -- often attempt to optimize the mean value of an uncertain objective. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Dimitris Bertsimas , Benjamin Boucher

Decision-makers abhor uncertainty, and it is certainly true that the less there is of it the better. However, recognizing that uncertainty is part of the equation, particularly for deciding on environmental policy, is a prerequisite for…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-28 Noel Cressie

This paper provides a non-robust interpretation of the distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem by relating the distributional uncertainties to the chance probabilities. Our analysis allows a decision-maker to interpret the size…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-22 Qi Wu , Shumin Ma , Cheuk Hang Leung , Wei Liu , Nanbo Peng

It is becoming increasingly apparent that probabilistic approaches can overcome conservatism and computational complexity of the classical worst-case deterministic framework and may lead to designs that are actually safer. In this paper we…

Applications · Statistics 2008-11-01 Xinjia Chen , Kemin Zhou , Jorge L. Aravena

In robust optimization, we would like to find a solution that is immunized against all scenarios that are modeled in an uncertainty set. Which scenarios to include in such a set is therefore of central importance for the tractability of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-14 Jamie Fairbrother , Marc Goerigk , Mohammad Khosravi

This paper offers a critical view of the "worst-case" approach that is the cornerstone of robust control design. It is our contention that a blind acceptance of worst-case scenarios may lead to designs that are actually more dangerous than…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-11-05 Xinjia Chen , Jorge Aravena , Kemin Zhou

Specifying a proper input distribution is often a challenging task in simulation modeling. In practice, there may be multiple plausible distributions that can fit the input data reasonably well, especially when the data volume is not large.…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-03-15 Weiwei Fan , L. Jeff Hong , Xiaowei Zhang

We examine a constrained Markov decision process under uncertain transition probabilities, with the uncertainty modeled as deviations from observed transition probabilities. We construct the uncertainty set associated with the deviations…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 V Varagapriya

Robustness of linear systems with constant coefficients is considered. There exist methods and tools for analyzing the stability of systems with random or deterministic uncertainties. At the same time, there are no approaches for the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-12-08 Andrey Tremba

We consider risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the MDP model is influenced by a parameter which takes values in a compact metric space. We identify sufficient conditions under which small perturbations in the model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-28 Shiping Shao , Abhishek Gupta , William B. Haskell

We consider a distributionally robust formulation of stochastic optimization problems arising in statistical learning, where robustness is with respect to uncertainty in the underlying data distribution. Our formulation builds on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-09 Mert Gürbüzbalaban , Andrzej Ruszczyński , Landi Zhu

This paper studies distributionally robust optimization for a rich class of risk measures with ambiguity sets defined by $\phi$-divergences. The risk measures are allowed to be non-linear in probabilities, are represented by Choquet…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Guanyu Jin , Roger J. A. Laeven , Dick den Hertog

We study a utility maximization problem in a financial market with a stochastic drift process, combining a worst-case approach with filtering techniques. Drift processes are difficult to estimate from asset prices, and at the same time…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2021-11-04 Jörn Sass , Dorothee Westphal

Predictive algorithms inform consequential decisions in settings with selective labels: outcomes are observed only for units selected by past decision makers. This creates an identification problem under unobserved confounding -- when…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-11-07 Ashesh Rambachan , Amanda Coston , Edward Kennedy

Distributionally Robust Optimisation (DRO) protects risk-averse decision-makers by considering the worst-case risk within an ambiguity set of distributions based on the empirical distribution or a model. To further guard against finite,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-07 Charita Dellaporta , Patrick O'Hara , Theodoros Damoulas

We address the problem of learning a decision policy from observational data of past decisions in contexts with features and associated outcomes. The past policy maybe unknown and in safety-critical applications, such as medical decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-04 Muhammad Osama , Dave Zachariah , Peter Stoica