Synthesis and Abstraction of Constraint Models for Hierarchical Resource Allocation Problems

Many resource allocation problems are hard to solve even with state-of-the-art constraint optimisation software upon reaching a certain scale. Our approach to deal with this increasing complexity is to employ a hierarchical “regio-central” mechanism. It requires two techniques: (1) the synthesis of several models of agents providing a certain resource into a centrally and efficiently solvable optimisation problem and (2) the creation of an abstracted version of this centralised model that reduces its complexity when passing it on to higher layers. We present algorithms to create such synthesised and abstracted models in a fully automated way and demonstrate empirically that the obtained solutions are comparable to central solutions but scale better in an example taken from energy management.

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