The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective
Chatterjee K, Doyen L, Raskin J-F, Sankur O. 2025. The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective. 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming. ICALP: Automata, Languages and Programming, LIPIcs, , 150.
Download
Conference Paper
| Published
| English
Scopus indexed
Author
Chatterjee, KrishnenduISTA
;
Doyen, Laurent;
Raskin, Jean-Francois;
Sankur, Ocan
Corresponding author has ISTA affiliation
Department
Series Title
LIPIcs
Abstract
We consider multiple-environment Markov decision processes (MEMDP), which consist of a finite set of MDPs over the same state space, representing different scenarios of transition structure and probability. The value of a strategy is the probability to satisfy the objective, here a parity objective, in the worst-case scenario, and the value of an MEMDP is the supremum of the values achievable by a strategy.
We show that deciding whether the value is 1 is a PSPACE-complete problem, and even in P when the number of environments is fixed, along with new insights to the almost-sure winning problem, which is to decide if there exists a strategy with value 1. Pure strategies are sufficient for theses problems, whereas randomization is necessary in general when the value is smaller than 1. We present an algorithm to approximate the value, running in double exponential space. Our results are in contrast to the related model of partially-observable MDPs where all these problems are known to be undecidable.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2025-07-30
Proceedings Title
52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming
Publisher
Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Acknowledgement
Krishnendu Chatterjee: ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) and Austrian Science Fund
(FWF) 10.55776/COE12. Jean-François Raskin: PDR Weave project FORM-LEARN-POMDP funded by FNRS and DFG, and the support of the Fondation ULB. Ocan Sankur: ANR BisoUS (ANR-22-CE48-0012) and ANR EpiRL (ANR-22-CE23-0029).
Article Number
150
Conference
ICALP: Automata, Languages and Programming
Conference Location
Aarhus, Denmark
Conference Date
2025-07-08 – 2025-07-11
ISBN
IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Chatterjee K, Doyen L, Raskin J-F, Sankur O. The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective. In: 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik; 2025. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.150
Chatterjee, K., Doyen, L., Raskin, J.-F., & Sankur, O. (2025). The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming. Aarhus, Denmark: Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.150
Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Laurent Doyen, Jean-Francois Raskin, and Ocan Sankur. “The Value Problem for Multiple-Environment MDPs with Parity Objective.” In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.150.
K. Chatterjee, L. Doyen, J.-F. Raskin, and O. Sankur, “The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective,” in 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, Aarhus, Denmark, 2025.
Chatterjee K, Doyen L, Raskin J-F, Sankur O. 2025. The value problem for multiple-environment MDPs with parity objective. 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming. ICALP: Automata, Languages and Programming, LIPIcs, , 150.
Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “The Value Problem for Multiple-Environment MDPs with Parity Objective.” 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, 150, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2025, doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.150.
All files available under the following license(s):
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0):
Main File(s)
File Name
2025_LIPIcs_Chatterjee.pdf
1.08 MB
Access Level
Open Access
Date Uploaded
2026-02-18
MD5 Checksum
4477a7fd4fbf0ba6c8e9b15683b5a6b8
Export
Marked PublicationsOpen Data ISTA Research Explorer
Sources
arXiv 2504.15960
