Boosting Combinatorial Problem Modeling with Machine Learning
It addresses the challenge of modeling in combinatorial optimization for experts and practitioners, but it is incremental as it reviews existing approaches rather than introducing new methods.
This survey explores how machine learning can enhance the modeling component of combinatorial optimization problems, aiming to improve accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness by learning constraints, objective functions, or entire models from data.
In the past few years, the area of Machine Learning (ML) has witnessed tremendous advancements, becoming a pervasive technology in a wide range of applications. One area that can significantly benefit from the use of ML is Combinatorial Optimization. The three pillars of constraint satisfaction and optimization problem solving, i.e., modeling, search, and optimization, can exploit ML techniques to boost their accuracy, efficiency and effectiveness. In this survey we focus on the modeling component, whose effectiveness is crucial for solving the problem. The modeling activity has been traditionally shaped by optimization and domain experts, interacting to provide realistic results. Machine Learning techniques can tremendously ease the process, and exploit the available data to either create models or refine expert-designed ones. In this survey we cover approaches that have been recently proposed to enhance the modeling process by learning either single constraints, objective functions, or the whole model. We highlight common themes to multiple approaches and draw connections with related fields of research.