Hub Location with Protection under Link Failures

TL;DR

This paper develops two optimization models for a robust hub location problem that ensures network connectivity despite link failures, minimizing setup and routing costs through explicit or implicit alternative path strategies.

Contribution

It introduces two novel models for designing protected hub networks under link failures, explicitly or implicitly ensuring alternative routing paths.

Findings

Both models effectively minimize costs under link failure scenarios.

The explicit model constructs alternative paths directly, while the implicit model guarantees their existence.

Computational results validate the models' performance and robustness.

Abstract

This paper introduces the Hub Location Problem under Link Failures, a hub location problem in which activated inter-hub links may fail with a given probability. Two different optimization models are studied, which construct hub backbone networks protected under hub links disruptions by imposing that for each commodity an additional routing path exists besides its original routing path. Both models consider the minimization of the set-up costs of the activated hubs and inter-hub links plus the expected value of the routing costs of the original and alternative paths. The first model builds explicitly the alternative routing paths, while the second model guarantees that for each commodity at least one alternative path exists using a large set of connectivity constraints, although the alternative paths are not built explicitly. The results of extensive computational testing allow to analyze the performance of the two proposed models and to evaluate the extra cost required to design a robust backbone network under hub links failures. The obtained results support the validity of the proposal.