The Interval Programming Model Solution Algorithm Experimentation Tools and Results

Abstract

Interval programming (IvP) is model for representing multi-objective optimization problems along with a set of solution algorithms. This paper describes a set of IvP solution experiments run over randomly generated problem instances, using five different versions of the Recursive Interval Programming ALgorithm (RIPAL). The final version is the algorithm used most extensively in practice, with the first four provided mostly for comparison as the final version is built up in complexity. The full details of the algorithms are outside the scope of this paper, with the focus here being the experimental results, and the software tools and technique used in generating the problem instances. Additional tools are described for facilitating the experiments, including visualization tools, and tools for generating the plots and tables shown in this document. All software tools are available under an open source license, and all problem instances reported here are also available online. This document is meant to supplement other discussions on the IvP model, algorithm, and IvP applications to provide the detail of reporting that would not be possible due to length restrictions of other papers.