Related papers: Planning for Risk-Aversion and Expected Value in M…

We consider controller synthesis for stochastic and partially unknown environments in which safety is essential. Specifically, we abstract the problem as a Markov decision process in which the expected performance is measured using a cost…

Constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) are used as a decision-making framework to study the long-run performance of a stochastic system. It is well-known that a stationary optimal policy of a CMDP problem under discounted cost…

This paper shows that the optimal policy and value functions of a Markov Decision Process (MDP), either discounted or not, can be captured by a finite-horizon undiscounted Optimal Control Problem (OCP), even if based on an inexact model.…

The Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem models probabilistic sequential-decision problems where an agent must pursue a goal while minimizing a cost function. Because of the probabilistic dynamics, it is desired to have a cost function…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used to model a wide variety of applications ranging from game playing over robotics to finance. Their optimal policy typically maximizes the expected sum of rewards given at each step of the decision…

Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) are popular risk measures from academic, industrial and regulatory perspectives. The problem of minimizing CVaR is theoretically known to be of Neyman-Pearson type binary solution. We…

In this paper, we consider a finite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) for which the objective at each stage is to minimize a quantile-based risk measure (QBRM) of the sequence of future costs; we call the overall objective a dynamic…

This article develops a new algorithm named TTRISK to solve high-dimensional risk-averse optimization problems governed by differential equations (ODEs and/or PDEs) under uncertainty. As an example, we focus on the so-called Conditional…

We consider the problem of designing policies for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with dynamic coherent risk objectives. Synthesizing risk-averse optimal policies for POMDPs requires infinite memory and thus…

The problem of constrained Markov decision process is considered. An agent aims to maximize the expected accumulated discounted reward subject to multiple constraints on its costs (the number of constraints is relatively small). A new dual…

We consider an auto-scaling technique in a cloud system where virtual machines hosted on a physical node are turned on and off depending on the queue's occupation (or thresholds), in order to minimise a global cost integrating both energy…

In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…

In this paper, we consider a modified version of the control problem in a model free Markov decision process (MDP) setting with large state and action spaces. The control problem most commonly addressed in the contemporary literature is to…

Chance Constrained Markov Decision Processes maximize reward subject to a bounded probability of failure, and have been frequently applied for planning with potentially dangerous outcomes or unknown environments. Solution algorithms have…

We present an algorithm that, given a representation of a road network in lane-level detail, computes a route that minimizes the expected cost to reach a given destination. In doing so, our algorithm allows us to solve for the complex…

We develop a reinforcement learning (RL) framework for insurance loss reserving that formulates reserve setting as a finite-horizon sequential decision problem under claim development uncertainty, macroeconomic stress, and solvency…

We study the policy testing problem in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the fixed-confidence setting under a generative model with static sampling. The goal is to decide whether the value of a given policy exceeds a specified…

We study a continuous-time portfolio optimization problem under an explicit constraint on the Deviation Conditional Value-at-Risk (DCVaR), defined as the difference between the CVaR and the expected terminal wealth. While the mean-CVaR…

We study the minimization of a spectral risk measure of the total discounted cost generated by a Markov Decision Process (MDP) over a finite or infinite planning horizon. The MDP is assumed to have Borel state and action spaces and the cost…

Autonomous cyber and cyber-physical systems need to perform decision-making, learning, and control in unknown environments. Such decision-making can be sensitive to multiple factors, including modeling errors, changes in costs, and impacts…