Optimizing dynamic investment decisions for railway systems protection

Optimizing dynamic investment decisions for railway systems protection

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Article ID: iaor201527859
Volume: 248
Issue: 2
Start Page Number: 543
End Page Number: 557
Publication Date: Jan 2016
Journal: European Journal of Operational Research
Authors: ,
Keywords: investment, allocation: resources, combinatorial optimization, risk, economics
Abstract:

Past and recent events have shown that railway infrastructure systems are particularly vulnerable to natural catastrophes, unintentional accidents and terrorist attacks. Protection investments are instrumental in reducing economic losses and preserving public safety. A systematic approach to plan security investments is paramount to guarantee that limited protection resources are utilized in the most efficient manner. In this paper, we present an optimization model to identify the railway assets which should be protected to minimize the impact of worst case disruptions on passenger flows. We consider a dynamic investment problem where protection resources become available over a planning horizon. The problem is formulated as a bilevel mixed‐integer model and solved using two different decomposition approaches. Random instances of different sizes are generated to compare the solution algorithms. The model is then tested on the Kent railway network to demonstrate how the results can be used to support efficient protection decisions.

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