[Reading] Uncapacitated single and multiple allocation p-hub center problems

Authors: Andreas T. Ernst et. al. , ELSEVIE, 2007

The paper refers to "p-hub" concept using for reducing the total cost of any networks - telecommunication, postal network, and even airline. The idea is to use a set of hubs to consolidate something (e.g., data, passengers, materials, ...). Two kinds of allocations studied by the authors - uncapacitated single allocation p-hub center problem (USApHCP) and uncapacitated multiple allocation p-hub center porblem (UMApHCP). They need to minimize the discounted cost of the largest origin-destination pair path : min max (cost) by using integer programming.

Meeting 18-FEB-09

10:30AM - I met up with Prof.Lee and Prof.Dusit was there before. The major topic was the research topic I'll continue in the next few months. I selected one since last week. It's "consolidation" + "optimization". We might call it "optimized consolidation". Actually I picked this topic since last JAN. It's arisen again when Gartner released a document "The Great Virtualization Dillemma of the Next Decade: What You Need to Know" on Feb 11, 09.

Nothing to talk much about the topic while I've derived anything yet. Ok! it's time to read more papers. Oops! I have to Prof.Babara Chapman's talk. I'll come back here again after the talk.

From an equation to a solution

Today at Dr.Tao's office, I went to discuss a research issue with him. Because I have less experience in math, especially optimization / linear programming; I need his support for my PHD research. Thankfully, he's a math expert and he helps me a lot. We just started with a simple equation. We were trying to find main factors for it and then review all related problems. We hope a final solution should be emerged by us soon.

Stare on Earth

Yesterday the class quite bored me. It's an evening class too that I feel tried and asleep. After finishing the class around 9.40PM, I went to my office, took my stuffs, and went back home. While walking to bus stop, I found an under-construction site. It's quite nearby my office, and absolutely hosted in my campus. The front side has a big poster that has the message "Home of the Earth Observatory of Singapore". WOW! How it's interesting. So I looked for the information about the so-call "Home". Its website is http://www.eos-singapore.org/. So this home is the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS). Its goal is to understand & address most serious environmental treats. The main areas of research are tectonic, volcanic, and climatic. This home would help Singapore and South East Asia countries (including my homeland, Thailand) anticipate and adapt to the treats. Great! we could know when disasters will happen and how we can protect ourselves from them.