The project is funded within the NWO Open Competition Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) programme, which supports excellent, bottom-up research by experienced scholars.

About the project

Many decision problems can be modelled as mathematical optimisation problems. Modern optimisation solvers can handle large-scale problems efficiently and deliver solutions in short time. In practice, however, these decisions are affected by many sources of uncertainty. The project aims to develop mathematical techniques that produce solutions that are robust with respect to these uncertainties. The new methods will be tested on several real-world applications, including:

• Optimising dike heights in the Dutch flood protection system.
• Optimising radiotherapy treatment plans for tumour irradiation.
• Optimising the food supply chain for the World Food Programme;
• Optimising the locations of healthcare centres in low-income countries.

By combining advanced optimisation with realistic uncertainty modelling, the project seeks to improve decision-making in domains where errors are costly and societal stakes are high.