Related papers: Semismooth Newton Methods for Risk-Averse Markov D…
Policy iteration and value iteration are at the core of many (approximate) dynamic programming methods. For Markov Decision Processes with finite state and action spaces, we show that they are instances of semismooth Newton-type methods to…
We develop a framework for convexifying a fairly general class of optimization problems. Under additional assumptions, we analyze the suboptimality of the solution to the convexified problem relative to the original nonconvex problem and…
Recently two approximate Newton methods were proposed for the optimisation of Markov Decision Processes. While these methods were shown to have desirable properties, such as a guarantee that the preconditioner is negative-semidefinite when…
We consider statistical Markov Decision Processes where the decision maker is risk averse against model ambiguity. The latter is given by an unknown parameter which influences the transition law and the cost functions. Risk aversion is…
Whereas classical Markov decision processes maximize the expected reward, we consider minimizing the risk. We propose to evaluate the risk associated to a given policy over a long-enough time horizon with the help of a central limit…
We consider the standard optimistic bilevel optimization problem, in particular upper- and lower-level constraints can be coupled. By means of the lower-level value function, the problem is transformed into a single-level optimization…
We develop an approach to time-consistent risk evaluation of continuous-time processes in Markov systems. Our analysis is based on dual representation of coherent risk measures, differentiability concepts for multivalued mappings, and a…
We consider the problem of designing policies for Markov decision processes (MDPs) with dynamic coherent risk objectives and constraints. We begin by formulating the problem in a Lagrangian framework. Under the assumption that the risk…
Many control problems in environments that can be modeled as Markov decision processes (MDPs) concern infinite-time horizon specifications. The classical aim in this context is to compute a control policy that maximizes the probability of…
We consider the problem of risk-sensitive control in a reinforcement learning (RL) framework. In particular, we aim to find a risk-optimal policy by maximizing the distortion riskmetric (DRM) of the discounted reward in a finite horizon…
We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a risk measure of variability in cost, under the risk-aware MDPs paradigm. Previous studies showed that risk-aware MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handling risk, can be…
A new variant of Newton's method for empirical risk minimization is studied, where at each iteration of the optimization algorithm, the gradient and Hessian of the objective function are replaced by robust estimators taken from existing…
By adopting a distributional viewpoint on law-invariant convex risk measures, we construct dynamics risk measures (DRMs) at the distributional level. We then apply these DRMs to investigate Markov decision processes, incorporating latent…
We develop a stochastic approximation-type algorithm to solve finite state/action, infinite-horizon, risk-aware Markov decision processes. Our algorithm has two loops. The inner loop computes the risk by solving a stochastic saddle-point…
We present a scheme for sequential decision making with a risk-sensitive objective and constraints in a dynamic environment. A neural network is trained as an approximator of the mapping from parameter space to space of risk and policy with…
This paper is devoted to studying the global and finite convergence of the semi-smooth Newton method for solving a piecewise linear system that arises in cone-constrained quadratic programming problems and absolute value equations. We first…
Gradient-based algorithms are one of the methods of choice for the optimisation of Markov Decision Processes. In this article we will present a novel approximate Newton algorithm for the optimisation of such models. The algorithm has…
In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…
In this paper we present an algorithm to compute risk averse policies in Markov Decision Processes (MDP) when the total cost criterion is used together with the average value at risk (AVaR) metric. Risk averse policies are needed when large…