Recently, the "Real-Time Scheduling Management for Urban Rail Transit" competition organized by the Railway Application Sections of the Institute for Research in Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) (https://connect.informs.org /railway-applications/new-item3/problem-solving-competition681) came to an end. A research team from the Optimization Solver Development Laboratory of Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data and Huawei GTS algorithm team participated in the competition and won the first runner-up of the competition.

This competition focused on real-time scheduling management of urban rail transit systems. The problem was based on the new Elizabeth line in London, UK, which has more than 1,100 daily train trips and 76 trains. The teams were required to propose a real-time optimization technique and method to adjust train schedules and train turnaround plans to cope with different types of disruptions such as delayed train departures, interval speed reductions and station emergencies. The team will ensure the service level of the line and reduce economic losses as much as possible.

The joint team proposed a "hierarchical decomposition-based rail operation recovery technology", which decomposes the original problem into a three-stage (rerouting, retiming, and repairing) optimization problem, which can be solved at the minute level. The solution was highly recognized by the jury and won the second place in the competition among many other solutions.

The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) is the world's largest professional association in the fields of operations research, management science and business analytics. It was merged with the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) into the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. With over 12,500 members from around the globe, INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics. INFORMS promotes best practices and advances in operations research, management science, and analytics to improve operational processes, decision-making, and outcomes through an array of highly cited publications, conferences, competitions, networking communities, and professional development services.