학술논문

Neural Network-Assisted Simulation Optimization with Covariates
Document Type
Conference
Source
2021 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) Simulation Conference (WSC), 2021 Winter. :1-12 Dec, 2021
Subject
Computing and Processing
General Topics for Engineers
System performance
Stochastic systems
Neural networks
Decision making
Real-time systems
Data models
Numerical models
Language
ISSN
1558-4305
Abstract
In real-time decision-making problems for complicated stochastic systems, a covariate that reflects the state of the system is observed in real time and a state-dependent decision needs to be made immediately to optimize some system performance. Such system performances, for complicated stochastic systems, often are not in closed-form and require time-consuming simulation experiments to evaluate, which can be prohibitive in real-time tasks. We propose two neural network-assisted methods to address this challenge by effectively utilizing simulation experiments that are conducted offline before the real-time tasks. One key step in the proposed methods integrates a classical simulation meta-modelling approach with neural networks to jointly capture the mapping from the covariate and the decision variable to the system performance, which enhances the use of offline simulation data and reduces the risk of model misspecification. A brief numerical experiment is presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed methods.