BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//eluceo/ical//2.0/EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:5b3822031032d4051de04dcde7376aa7 DTSTAMP:20241105T001441Z SUMMARY:Esra Büyüktahtakιn Toy\, PhD\, Virginia Tech DESCRIPTION: \n\nABSTRACT\n\nBiological systems have highly uncertain behav iors to predict. The\ninherent uncertainty in species’ population dynami cs and\ncombinatorial resource allocation decisions often result in\nmulti -stage stochastic optimization problems. In this talk\, we will\npresent a n innovative data-driven multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer\noptimizatio n modeling and cutting-plane approach to tackle a\nlarge-scale optimizatio n problem under decision-dependent uncertainty.\nWe demonstrate our model and the algorithm on one of the most pressing\nproblems of the USDA Forest Service\, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB)\ninfestation killing millions of as h trees in North America. We\nvalidate our operations research approach us ing 7-years of unique ash\nhealth data collected by our collaborators from the USDA Forest\nService over multiple spatial locations in Ohio. Computa tional results\nshow that our cutting plane-based method can substantially reduce the\nsolution time for this forest insect infestation problem with binary\nand continuous resource allocation decisions. Our findings provid e\ncritical insight into a long-debated question among foresters:\ntreatme nt versus removal of the ash trees to save as many trees as\npossible. Thi s study is a part of the ongoing joint work with\ncollaborators from the U .S. Forest Service (Robert Haight\, PhD\;\nKathleen Knight\, PhD\; and Cha rlie Flower\, PhD) and former doctoral\nstudents (Eyyub Kibis\, PhD\; Saba h Bushaj\, PhD\; and Chen Chen\, PhD) and\na faculty collaborator from NJI T\, Wenbo Cai\, PhD.\n DTSTART:20230316T140000Z DTEND:20230316T150000Z LOCATION:https://drexel.zoom.us/j/82658935184 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR