Network reliability design via joint probabilistic constraints

Network reliability is an important issue in network planning and operation. While there is a flourishing literature on reliability measurement both theoretical and computational, very little effort has been made to address practical applicability of reliability concepts in real network design problems. This work attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice by relating reliability concepts to design criteria, useful in several practical contexts. In particular, the problem of finding a minimum cost network design, satisfying some reliability constraints is addressed. An integer programming model is developed to represent mathematically the proposed network design problem. For its solution, two heuristics approaches are devised and implemented. Their performance is evaluated on a set of well-known test problems. The computational results collected are very encouraging, showing that the developed methods determine good quality solutions, in a limited amount of time.