arXiv subjects

Thorsten Koch

Publications and source records attributed to Thorsten Koch.

45 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Controlling transient gas flow in real-world pipeline intersection areas

Compressor stations are the heart of every high-pressure gas transport network. Located at intersection areas of the network they are contained in huge complex plants, where they are in combination with valves and regulators responsible for routing and pushing the gas through the network. Due to their complexity and lack of data compressor stations are usually dealt with in the scientific literature in a highly simplified and idealized manner. As part of an ongoing project with one of Germany's largest Transmission System Operators to develop a decision support system for their dispatching center, we investigated how to automatize control of compressor stations. Each station has to be in a particular configuration, leading in combination with the other nearby elements to a discrete set of up to 2000 possible feasible operation modes in the intersection area. Since the desired performance of the station changes over time, the configuration of the station has to adapt. Our goal is to minimize the necessary changes in the overall operation modes and related elements over time, while fulfilling a preset performance envelope or demand scenario. This article describes the chosen model and the implemented mixed integer programming based algorithms to tackle this challenge. By presenting extensive computational results on real world data we demonstrate the performance of our approach.

math.OC↗

arXiv2022

Article's Scientific Prestige: measuring the impact of individual articles in the Web of Science

We performed a citation analysis on the Web of Science publications consisting of more than 63 million articles and 1.45 billion citations on 254 subjects from 1981 to 2020. We proposed the Article's Scientific Prestige (ASP) metric and compared this metric to number of citations (#Cit) and journal grade in measuring the scientific impact of individual articles in the large-scale hierarchical and multi-disciplined citation network. In contrast to #Cit, ASP, that is computed based on the eigenvector centrality, considers both direct and indirect citations, and provides steady-state evaluation cross different disciplines. We found that ASP and #Cit are not aligned for most articles, with a growing mismatch amongst the less cited articles. While both metrics are reliable for evaluating the prestige of articles such as Nobel Prize winning articles, ASP tends to provide more persuasive rankings than #Cit when the articles are not highly cited. The journal grade, that is eventually determined by a few highly cited articles, is unable to properly reflect the scientific impact of individual articles. The number of references and coauthors are less relevant to scientific impact, but subjects do make a difference.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2022

Faster exact solution of sparse MaxCut and QUBO problems

The maximum-cut problem is one of the fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization. With the advent of quantum computers, both the maximum-cut and the equivalent quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem have experienced much interest in recent years. This article aims to advance the state of the art in the exact solution of both problems -- by using mathematical programming techniques on digital computers. The main focus lies on sparse problem instances, although also dense ones can be solved. We enhance several algorithmic components such as reduction techniques and cutting-plane separation algorithms, and combine them in an exact branch-and-cut solver. Furthermore, we provide a parallel implementation. The new solver is shown to significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art software for sparse MaxCut and QUBO instances. Furthermore, we improve the best known bounds for several instances from the 7th DIMACS Challenge and the QPLIB, and solve some of them (for the first time) to optimality.

math.OC↗

arXiv2021

The SCIP Optimization Suite 8.0

The SCIP Optimization Suite provides a collection of software packages for mathematical optimization centered around the constraint integer programming framework SCIP. This paper discusses enhancements and extensions contained in version 8.0 of the SCIP Optimization Suite. Major updates in SCIP include improvements in symmetry handling and decomposition algorithms, new cutting planes, a new plugin type for cut selection, and a complete rework of the way nonlinear constraints are handled. Additionally, SCIP 8.0 now supports interfaces for Julia as well as Matlab. Further, UG now includes a unified framework to parallelize all solvers, a utility to analyze computational experiments has been added to GCG, dual solutions can be postsolved by PaPILO, new heuristics and presolving methods were added to SCIP-SDP, and additional problem classes and major performance improvements are available in SCIP-Jack.

math.OC↗

arXiv2021

AppSecure.nrw Software Security Study

In recent years, the World Economic Forum has identified software security as the most significant technological risk to the world's population, as software-intensive systems process critical data and provide critical services. This raises the question of the extent to which German companies are addressing software security in developing and operating their software products. This paper reports on the results of an extensive study among developers, product owners, and managers to answer this question. Our results show that ensuring security is a multi-faceted challenge for companies, involving low awareness, inaccurate self-assessment, and a lack of competence on the topic of secure software development among all stakeholders. The current situation in software development is therefore detrimental to the security of software products in the medium and long term.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2021

The Variational Bayesian Inference for Network Autoregression Models

We develop a variational Bayesian (VB) approach for estimating large-scale dynamic network models in the network autoregression framework. The VB approach allows for the automatic identification of the dynamic structure of such a model and obtains a direct approximation of the posterior density. Compared to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based sampling approaches, the VB approach achieves enhanced computational efficiency without sacrificing estimation accuracy. In the simulation study conducted here, the proposed VB approach detects various types of proper active structures for dynamic network models. Compared to the alternative approach, the proposed method achieves similar or better accuracy, and its computational time is halved. In a real data analysis scenario of day-ahead natural gas flow prediction in the German gas transmission network with 51 nodes between October 2013 and September 2015, the VB approach delivers promising forecasting accuracy along with clearly detected structures in terms of dynamic dependence.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2021

Generative deep learning for decision making in gas networks

A decision support system relies on frequent re-solving of similar problem instances. While the general structure remains the same in corresponding applications, the input parameters are updated on a regular basis. We propose a generative neural network design for learning integer decision variables of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations of these problems. We utilise a deep neural network discriminator and a MILP solver as our oracle to train our generative neural network. In this article, we present the results of our design applied to the transient gas optimisation problem. With the trained network we produce a feasible solution in 2.5s, use it as a warm-start solution, and thereby decrease global optimal solution solve time by 60.5%.

math.OC↗

arXiv2019

First Experiments with Structure-Aware Presolving for a Parallel Interior-Point Method

In linear optimization, matrix structure can often be exploited algorithmically. However, beneficial presolving reductions sometimes destroy the special structure of a given problem. In this article, we discuss structure-aware implementations of presolving as part of a parallel interior-point method to solve linear programs with block-diagonal structure, including both linking variables and linking constraints. While presolving reductions are often mathematically simple, their implementation in a high-performance computing environment is a complex endeavor. We report results on impact, performance, and scalability of the resulting presolving routines on real-world energy system models with up to 700 million nonzero entries in the constraint matrix.

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arXiv2018

Reduction-based exact solution of prize-collecting Steiner tree problems

The prize-collecting Steiner tree problem PCSTP is a well-known generalization of the classical Steiner tree problem in graphs, with a large number of practical applications. It attracted particular interest during the latest (11th) DIMACS Challenge and since then a number of PCSTP solvers have been introduced in the literature, some of which drastically improved on the best results achieved at the Challenge. The following article aims to further advance the state of the art. It introduces new techniques and algorithms for PCSTP, involving various forms of reductions of PCSTP instances to equivalent problems---which for example allows to decrease the problem size or to obtain a better IP formulation. Several of the new techniques and algorithms provably dominate previous approaches. Further theoretical properties of the new components, such as their complexity, are discussed, and their profound interaction is described. Finally, the new developments also translate into a strong computational performance: the resulting exact solver outperforms all previous approaches---both in terms of run-time and solvability---and can solve formerly intractable benchmark instances from the 11th DIMACS Challenge to optimality.

math.OC↗