Dynamic Network Design Problem under Demand Uncertainty: An Adjustable Robust Optimization Approach

Abstract

This paper develops an adjustable robust optimization approach for a network design problem explicitly incorporating traffic dynamics and demand uncertainty. In particular, a cell transmission model based network design problem of linear programming type is considered to describe dynamic traffic flows, and a polyhedral uncertainty set is used to characterize the demand uncertainty. The major contribution of this paper is to formulate such an adjustable robust network design problem as a tractable linear programming model and justify the model which is less conservative by comparing its solution performance with the robust solution from the usual robust model. The numerical results using one network from the literature demonstrate the modeling advantage of the adjustable robust optimization and provided strategic managerial insights for enacting capacity expansion policies under demand uncertainty.