Expansion planning for waste-to-energy systems using waste forecast prediction sets
研究了废物能源系统在废物供应不确定下的扩展规划问题，提出基于预测集的不确定性模型，通过混合整数线性规划优化净现值，并验证了方法的稳定性与竞争力。
We consider an expansion planning problem for Waste-to-Energy (WtE) systems facing uncertainty in future waste supplies. The WtE expansion plans are regarded as strategic, long term decisions, while the waste distribution and treatment are medium to short term operational decisions which can adapt to the actual waste collected. We propose a prediction set uncertainty model which integrates a set of waste generation forecasts and is constructed based on user-specified levels of forecasting errors. Next, we use the prediction sets for WtE expansion scenario analysis. More specifically, for a given WtE expansion plan, the guaranteed net present value (NPV) is evaluated by computing an extreme value forecast trajectory of future waste generation from the prediction set that minimizes the maximum NPV of the WtE project. This problem is essentially a multiple stage min-max dynamic optimization problem. By exploiting the structure of the WtE problem, we show this is equivalent to a simpler min-max optimization problem, which can be further transformed into a single mixed-integer linear program. Furthermore, we extend the model to optimize the guaranteed NPV by searching over the set of all feasible expansion scenarios, and show that this can be solved by an exact cutting plane approach. We also propose a heuristic based on a constant proportion distribution rule for the WtE expansion optimization model, which reduces the problem into a moderate size mixed-integer program. Finally, our computational studies demonstrate that our proposed expansion model solutions are very stable and competitive in performance compared to scenario tree approaches. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 47–70, 2016