Advanced Topics in Decision Support

The organizer of this teaching unit and its evaluation is the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg. Note that the registration procedure and deadlines are different from the JMCS (see below in the comment field).

In this course, we start with a presentation of the dynamic programming approach which is a mathematical optimization method. This technique will be illustrated using well-known problems like the knapsack problem, the stock management problem, the resource allocation problem or the shortest path problem.

In a second part, we will concentrate on network flow problems (max flow, min cost flow, etc…). Our focus will be on the modeling part but we will also see how to solve such problems efficiently using well-known algorithms.

In the last part, we introduce project management/scheduling problems, present the critical path method as well as the concept of crashing. We also focus on the case when the exact durations of the tasks to be executed are not known.

All topics will be illustrated by examples taken from economics, management science and operations research.

Details

Code 53086
Type Course
ECTS 5
Site Fribourg
Track(s) T5 – Information Systems and Decision Support
Semester S2026

Teaching

Learning Outcomes
  1. Understand the dynamic programming approach and be able to apply it to real problems.
  2. Be able to model and solve real world problems using network flow techniques.
  3. Be able to solve project management problems using the CP method as well as understand the concept of crashing.
Lecturer(s) Bernard Ries
Language english
Course Page

The course page can be found at https://www.unifr.ch/timetable/en/course.html?show=126771.

Schedules and Rooms

Period Weekly
Schedule Wednesday, 15:15 - 18:00
Location UniFR, PER21

Additional information

Comment

First Lecture
The first lecture will be announced later.

Course and Exam Registration
The registration can be done on MyUnifr during the defined registration period. For more details, please have a look here and at the example. Note that there are two different courses (one with 4.5 and one with 5 ECTS) and you have to register for the second one worth 5 ECTS: “EIG.00133 Advanced Topics in Decision Support (5 ECTS)”