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Basciftci, Beste

Publications and source records attributed to Basciftci, Beste.

Capturing Travel Mode Adoption in Designing On-Demand Multimodal Transit Systems

This paper studies how to integrate rider mode preferences into the design of on-demand multimodal transit systems (ODMTSs). It is motivated by a common worry in transit agencies that an ODMTS may be poorly designed if the latent demand, that is, new riders adopting the system, is not captured. This paper proposes a bilevel optimization model to address this challenge, in which the leader problem determines the ODMTS design, and the follower problems identify the most cost efficient and convenient route for riders under the chosen design. The leader model contains a choice model for every potential rider that determines whether the rider adopts the ODMTS given her proposed route. To solve the bilevel optimization model, the paper proposes an exact decomposition method that includes Benders optimal cuts and no-good cuts to ensure the consistency of the rider choices in the leader and follower problems. Moreover, to improve computational efficiency, the paper proposes upper and lower bounds on trip durations for the follower problems, valid inequalities that strengthen the no-good cuts, and approaches to reduce the problem size with problem-specific preprocessing techniques. The proposed method is validated using an extensive computational study on a real data set from the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, the transit agency for the broader Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti region in Michigan. The study considers the impact of a number of factors, including the price of on-demand shuttles, the number of hubs, and access to transit systems criteria. The designed ODMTSs feature high adoption rates and significantly shorter trip durations compared with the existing transit system and highlight the benefits of ensuring access for low-income riders. Finally, the computational study demonstrates the efficiency of the decomposition method for the case study and the benefits of computational enhancements that improve the baseline method by several orders of magnitude. Funding: This research was partly supported by National Science Foundation [Leap HI Proposal NSF-1854684] and the Department of Energy [Research Award 7F-30154].

Operations Research & Management Science↗

Resource distribution under spatiotemporal uncertainty of disease spread: Stochastic versus robust approaches

We consider the problem of optimizing locations of distribution centers (DCs) and plans for distributing resources such as test kits and vaccines, under spatiotemporal uncertainties of disease spread and demand for the resources. We aim to balance the operational cost (including costs of deploying facilities, shipping, and storage) and quality of service (reflected by demand coverage), while ensuring equity and fairness of resource distribution across multiple populations. We compare a sample-based stochastic programming (SP) approach with a distributionally robust optimization (DRO) approach using a moment-based ambiguity set. Numerical studies are conducted on instances of distributing COVID-19 vaccines in the United States and test kits, to compare SP and DRO models with a deterministic formulation using estimated demand and with the current resource distribution plans implemented in the US. We demonstrate the results over distinct phases of the pandemic to estimate the cost and speed of resource distribution depending on scale and coverage, and show the “demand-driven” properties of the SP and DRO solutions. Furthermore, our results further indicate that if the worst-case unmet demand is prioritized, then the DRO approach is preferred despite of its higher overall cost. Nevertheless, the SP approach can provide an intermediate plan under budgetary restrictions without significant compromises in demand coverage.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Distributionally robust facility location problem under decision-dependent stochastic demand

While the traditional facility location problem considers exogenous demand, in some applications, locations of facilities could affect the willingness of customers to use certain types of services, e.g., carsharing, and therefore they also affect realizations of random demand. Moreover, a decision maker may not know the exact distribution of such endogenous demand and how it is affected by location choices. In this paper, we consider a distributionally robust facility location problem, in which we interpret the moments of stochastic demand as functions of facility-location decisions. We reformulate a two-stage decision-dependent distributionally robust optimization model as a monolithic formulation, and then derive exact mixed-integer linear programming reformulation as well as valid inequalities when the means and variances of demand are piecewise linear functions of location solutions. We conduct extensive computational studies, in which we compare our model with a decision-dependent deterministic model, as well as stochastic programming and distributionally robust models without the decision-dependent assumption. Here, the results show superior performance of our approach with remarkable improvement in profit and quality of service under various settings, in addition to computational speed-ups given by formulation enhancements. These results draw attention to the need of considering the impact of location decisions on customer demand within this strategic-level planning problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗