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Poster

Outlier-Robust Distributionally Robust Optimization via Unbalanced Optimal Transport

Zifan Wang · Yi Shen · Michael Zavlanos · Karl H. Johansson


Abstract:

Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) deals with uncertainty in data distributions by optimizing the model performance against the worst possible distribution within an ambiguity set. In this paper, we propose a DRO framework that relies on a new distance inspired by Unbalanced Optimal Transport (UOT). The designed UOT distance employs a soft penalization term instead of hard constraints, enabling the construction of an ambiguity set that is more resilient to outliers. Under smoothness conditions, we establish strong duality for the proposed DRO problem. Moreover, we introduce a computationally efficient Lagrangian penalty formulation for which we also show that strong duality holds. Finally, we provide empirical results that demonstrate that our method offers improved robustness to outliers and is computationally less demanding for regression and classification tasks.

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