040974 UK Methods of Decision Support (MA) (2024S)

The aim of the course is to get acquainted with the basic concepts in the areas combinatorial optimization, dynamic optimization, and multicriteria decision analysis. Mathematical representations of important problem types (usually based on linear programming formulations) are introduced, and solution techniques are outlined. We shall discuss exact as well as heuristic solution methods. Among others, we will consider branch-and-bound methods, greedy algorithms, local search, simulated annealing, variable neighborhood search, genetic algorithms, dynamic programming, and epsilon-constraint methods.