Our society relies on the availability of efficient infrastructure networks for transportation, communication, energy supply, health care, and education, to mention some examples. Infrastructure design has a long-term impact for the effective functioning of our daily life, it is expensive and design decisions are often almost irreversible.
In view of the complexity arising from the interplay between various factors belonging to different planning steps, mathematics has become an indispensable tool for the layout and efficient operation of infrastructure networks. And Matheon develops the mathematical techniques for that.
Networks are fundamental structures of graph theory and combinatorics which constitute the mathematical roots of many projects in this application field. Just as the application problems addressed have developed towards more general and unifying topics, the range of mathematical techniques employed has broadened. Besides classical mathematical areas such as, for example, combinatorial optimization, network flow theory, and integer linear programming, also younger areas such as approximation and online algorithms, robust optimization, algorithmic game theory and integer nonlinear programming have moved into the focus of this application field.