Comparative Analysis of Discrete and Continuous Action Spaces in Reservoir Management and Inventory Control Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Boddepalli, Sravani, Kothavale, Prathamesh
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Boddepalli, Sravani
Kothavale, Prathamesh
author_facet Boddepalli, Sravani
Kothavale, Prathamesh
contents This paper presents a comparative analysis of discrete and continuous action spaces within the contexts of reservoir management and inventory control problems. We explore the computational trade-offs between discrete action discretizations and continuous action settings, focusing on their effects on time complexity and space requirements across different horizons. Our analysis includes a detailed evaluation of discretization levels in reservoir management, highlighting that finer discretizations approach the performance of continuous actions but at increased computational costs. For inventory control, we investigate deterministic and stochastic demand scenarios, demonstrating the exponential growth in time and space with increasing discrete actions and inventory items. We also introduce a novel symbolic approach for solving continuous problems in hybrid MDPs (H-MDPs), utilizing a new XADD data structure to manage piecewise symbolic value functions. Our results underscore the challenges of scaling solutions and provide insights into efficient handling of discrete and continuous action spaces in complex decision problems. Future research directions include exploring heuristic search methods and improved approximations for enhancing the practicality of exact solutions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_02093
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Comparative Analysis of Discrete and Continuous Action Spaces in Reservoir Management and Inventory Control Problems
Boddepalli, Sravani
Kothavale, Prathamesh
Optimization and Control
Numerical Analysis
This paper presents a comparative analysis of discrete and continuous action spaces within the contexts of reservoir management and inventory control problems. We explore the computational trade-offs between discrete action discretizations and continuous action settings, focusing on their effects on time complexity and space requirements across different horizons. Our analysis includes a detailed evaluation of discretization levels in reservoir management, highlighting that finer discretizations approach the performance of continuous actions but at increased computational costs. For inventory control, we investigate deterministic and stochastic demand scenarios, demonstrating the exponential growth in time and space with increasing discrete actions and inventory items. We also introduce a novel symbolic approach for solving continuous problems in hybrid MDPs (H-MDPs), utilizing a new XADD data structure to manage piecewise symbolic value functions. Our results underscore the challenges of scaling solutions and provide insights into efficient handling of discrete and continuous action spaces in complex decision problems. Future research directions include exploring heuristic search methods and improved approximations for enhancing the practicality of exact solutions.
title Comparative Analysis of Discrete and Continuous Action Spaces in Reservoir Management and Inventory Control Problems
topic Optimization and Control
Numerical Analysis
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02093