Videos

Markov decision processes with Kusuoka-type conditional risk mappings

Presenter
May 13, 2022
Abstract
Under suitable conditions, the Kusuoka representation of law invariant coherent risk measures allows one to cast them in terms of average value-at-risk. Here, we introduce the notion of Kusuoka-type conditional risk-mappings and use it to define a dynamic risk measure. We use such dynamic risk measures to study infinite horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with random costs and random actions. Under mild assumptions, we derive a dynamic programming principle and prove the existence of an optimal policy. This contributes to the risk-aware MDP framework of RuszczyƄski (2010). Furthermore, we provide a sufficient condition for when deterministic actions are optimal. We also propose a sample-based solver for MDPs with Kusuoka-type conditional risk mappings and finite state action spaces.