An approach to the distributionally robust shortest path problem

TL;DR

This paper addresses the distributionally robust shortest path problem where arc costs have uncertain distributions, proposing reformulations and demonstrating computational effectiveness through numerical experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distributionally robust formulation for the shortest path problem with moment-based ambiguity sets and provides equivalent robust and MIP reformulations.

Findings

The robust reformulation is NP-hard.

The problem without first-order constraints is polynomially solvable.

MIP reformulation can be efficiently solved with standard solvers.

Abstract

In this study we consider the shortest path problem, where the arc costs are subject to distributional uncertainty. Basically, the decision-maker attempts to minimize her worst-case expected loss over an ambiguity set (or a family) of candidate distributions that are consistent with the decision-maker's initial information. The ambiguity set is formed by all distributions that satisfy prescribed linear first-order moment constraints with respect to subsets of arcs and individual probability constraints with respect to particular arcs. Under some additional assumptions the resulting distributionally robust shortest path problem (DRSPP) admits equivalent robust and mixed-integer programming (MIP) reformulations. The robust reformulation is shown to be $NP$-hard, whereas the problem without the first-order moment constraints is proved to be polynomially solvable. We perform numerical experiments to illustrate the advantages of the considered approach; we also demonstrate that the MIP reformulation of DRSPP can be solved effectively using off-the-shelf solvers.