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Robust optimization is a tractable and expressive technique for decision-making under uncertainty, but it can lead to overly conservative decisions when pessimistic assumptions are made on the uncertain parameters. Wasserstein…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Irina Wang , Cole Becker , Bart Van Parys , Bartolomeo Stellato

This paper builds on classical distributionally robust optimization techniques to construct a comprehensive framework that can be used for solving inverse problems. Given an estimated distribution of inputs in $X$ and outputs in $Y$, an…

Dynamic decision-making under distributional shifts is of fundamental interest in theory and applications of reinforcement learning: The distribution of the environment in which the data is collected can differ from that of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

In this note we provide an upper bound for the difference between the value function of a distributionally robust Markov decision problem and the value function of a non-robust Markov decision problem, where the ambiguity set of probability…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-30 Ariel Neufeld , Julian Sester

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are known to be sensitive to parameter specification. Distributionally robust MDPs alleviate this issue by allowing for \emph{ambiguity sets} which give a set of possible distributions over parameter sets.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-05 Julien Grand-Clément , Christian Kroer

This paper discusses a class of combinatorial optimization problems with uncertain costs in the objective function. It is assumed that a sample of the cost realizations is available, which defines an empirical probability distribution for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-21 Marcel Jackiewicz , Adam Kasperski , Pawel Zielinski

We propose a distributionally robust logistic regression model with an unfairness penalty that prevents discrimination with respect to sensitive attributes such as gender or ethnicity. This model is equivalent to a tractable convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-21 Bahar Taskesen , Viet Anh Nguyen , Daniel Kuhn , Jose Blanchet

Robust Reinforcement Learning aims to find the optimal policy with some extent of robustness to environmental dynamics. Existing learning algorithms usually enable the robustness through disturbing the current state or simulating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-02 Linfang Hou , Liang Pang , Xin Hong , Yanyan Lan , Zhiming Ma , Dawei Yin

We propose a distributionally robust return-risk model for Markov decision processes (MDPs) under risk and reward ambiguity. The proposed model optimizes the weighted average of mean and percentile performances, and it covers the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-05 Haolin Ruan , Zhi Chen , Chin Pang Ho

This paper presents a novel Wasserstein distributionally robust control and state estimation algorithm for partially observable linear stochastic systems, where the probability distributions of disturbances and measurement noises are…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-05 Minhyuk Jang , Astghik Hakobyan , Insoon Yang

The standard quadratic optimization problem (StQP) consists of minimizing a quadratic form over the standard simplex. Without assuming convexity or concavity of the quadratic form, the StQP is NP-hard. This problem has many interesting…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-09 Immanuel M. Bomze , Daniel de Vicente , Abdel Lisser , Heng Zhang

We introduce a general framework for Markov decision problems under model uncertainty in a discrete-time infinite horizon setting. By providing a dynamic programming principle we obtain a local-to-global paradigm, namely solving a local,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-06 Ariel Neufeld , Julian Sester , Mario Šikić

Stochastic optimal control usually requires an explicit dynamical model with probability distributions, which are difficult to obtain in practice. In this work, we consider the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem of unknown linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-18 Feiran Zhao , Keyou You

Reinforcement learning algorithms, though successful, tend to over-fit to training environments hampering their application to the real-world. This paper proposes $\text{W}\text{R}^{2}\text{L}$ -- a robust reinforcement learning algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-18 Mohammed Amin Abdullah , Hang Ren , Haitham Bou Ammar , Vladimir Milenkovic , Rui Luo , Mingtian Zhang , Jun Wang

We propose a scalable robust learning algorithm combining kernel smoothing and robust optimization. Our method is motivated by the convex analysis perspective of distributionally robust optimization based on probability metrics, such as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Jia-Jie Zhu , Christina Kouridi , Yassine Nemmour , Bernhard Schölkopf

We introduce a distributionally robust maximum likelihood estimation model with a Wasserstein ambiguity set to infer the inverse covariance matrix of a $p$-dimensional Gaussian random vector from $n$ independent samples. The proposed model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Viet Anh Nguyen , Daniel Kuhn , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani

We revisit Markowitz's mean-variance portfolio selection model by considering a distributionally robust version, where the region of distributional uncertainty is around the empirical measure and the discrepancy between probability measures…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-02-15 Jose Blanchet , Lin Chen , Xun Yu Zhou

Wasserstein distributionally robust optimization offers a framework for model fitting in machine learning under potential shifts in the data distribution. We study a regularized variant of this problem in which entropic smoothing produces a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Tam Le

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

We study stochastic Nash equilibrium problems subject to heterogeneous uncertainty on the expected valued cost functions of the individual agents, where we assume no prior knowledge of the underlying probability distributions of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-29 Georgios Pantazis , Barbara Franci , Sergio Grammatico