Commentary on: A Mathematical Programming Algorithm for Planning and Scheduling

This paper describes a method for scheduling observations by earth-observing satellites. The underlying problem is translated into a directed acyclic graph for each satellite. Each arc in the graph has a profit related to the value associated with an image. Each arc of the graph also represents the constraints of the problem, including memory, time and orbits. The scheduling problem is solved by representing the problem such that it is a shortest path problem with resource constraints (SPPRC). Since each satellite is independent their solutions can be found independently. The authors discuss simplifying the problem to an “almost feasible solution” in which some constraints are relaxed. This produces a smaller set of possible answers that can lend themselves to further reduction with heuristic techniques.