A reduced cost-based restriction and refinement matheuristic for stochastic network design problem

Abstract

We propose a solution approach for stochastic network design problems with uncertain demands. We investigate how to efficiently use reduced cost information as a means of guiding variable fixing to define a restriction that reduces the complexity of solving the stochastic model without sacrificing the quality of the solution obtained. We then propose a matheuristic approach that iteratively defines and explores restricted regions of the global solution space that have a high potential of containing good solutions. Extensive computational experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in obtaining high-quality solutions, while reducing the computational effort to obtain them.