Robust decomposable Markov decision processes motivated by allocating school budgets

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Author
Dimitrov, Nedialko B.
Dimitrov, Stanko
Chukova, Stefanka
Date
2014Metadata
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Motivated by an application to school funding, we introduce the notion of a robust decomposable Markov decision process (MDP). A robust decomposable MDP model applies to situations where several MDPs, with the transition probabilities in each only known through an uncertainty set, are coupled together by joint resource constraints. Robust decomposable MDPs are different than both decomposable MDPs, and robust MDPs and can not be solved by a direct application of the solution methods from either of those areas. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, there is no known method to tractably compute optimal policies in robust, decomposable MDPs. We show how to tractably compute good policies for this model, and apply the derived method to a stylized school funding example.
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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