Optimization Options
After loading a selected configuration and dataset, Network Design is ready to run the optimization from the Control Panel page. However, there are additional options which may be customized before running the optimization. More specifically, on the Optimization Options page you can set constraints and select objectives for the optimization model.
Optimization Options
The following table contains all possible objectives which you can be selected for the optimization:
The possible objectives which may be included are physical cost, custom costs (e.g. Taxes, Insurance) and custom objectives (e.g. Carbon Emission, Water used). The main difference between custom costs and custom objectives is their unit of measurement, namely:
the custom costs are measured in the currency specified in your configuration and can be added to the physical cost by using the Weight Factor 1;
the custom objectives may be measured in any unit specified in the wizard and can be converted to currency by using custom Weight Factors.
Note
The units of custom objectives are only labels. The custom Weight Factors can be defined on the Single Value Data page in the template.
Objectives Selection
How to select objectives to be included in the optimization?
You can choose to select only one objective by ticking in its row in the Include in Objective column of the table above. In this case, the value of the selected objective will be minimized.
You can also choose to select more than one objective by ticking in their rows in the Include in Objective column. The model will try and make a trade off between the selected objectives during the optimization.
Constraints Setting
How to impose restrictions to the values of physical cost and custom objectives to be included in the optimization?
You can choose to set a constraint for an objective by setting an upper bound in its row on the Maximum Allowed column of the table above.
Also, after one optimization round, you can choose to restrict the value of physical cost or any custom objective by a custom percentage of its actual Total Value, as follows:
Right click on the actual value of Maximum Allowed in the row you want to change;
In the pop-up menu, click on Set by Percentage of Total Value;
On the opening dialog page, fill in a positive or negative percentage in order to set the limit.
The value of the imposed limit will be then higher or lower than the actual Total Value by the specified percentage.
Optimization Outputs
After the optimization, some overviews of the costs and of the custom objectives values are provided.
Costs Overview
The table below shows an overview of all the various costs and their total value. It includes a subtotal of the physical and the custom costs as well as a subtotal for the calculated costs of the custom objectives.
The costs of the custom objectives are determined by using their values (in their specified unit) and their Weight Factors. If no Weight Factor has been specified, then the corresponding cost is set to 0.
Custom Objectives Overview
The following table shows an overview of the custom objectives, including their actual values and their units as specified:
Note
The last two tables above show only output values and therefore, their contents may not be edited by the user.