Operations research often solves deterministic optimization problems based on elegantand conciserepresentationswhereall parametersarepreciselyknown. In the face of uncertainty, probability theory is the traditional tool to be appealed for, and stochastic optimization is actually a signi?cant sub-area in operations research. However, the systematic use of prescribed probability distributions so as to cope with imperfect data is partially unsatisfactory. First, going from a deterministic to a stochastic formulation, a problem may becomeintractable. Agoodexampleiswhengoingfromdeterministictostoch- tic scheduling problems like PERT. From the inception of the PERT method in the 1950’s, it was acknowledged that data concerning activity duration times is generally not perfectly known and the study of stochastic PERT was launched quite early. Even if the power of today’s computers enables the stochastic PERT to be addressed to a large extent, still its solutions often require simplifying assumptions of some kind. Another di?culty is that stochastic optimization problems produce solutions in the average. For instance, the criterion to be maximized is more often than not expected utility. This is not always a meaningful strategy. In the case when the underlying process is not repeated a lot of times, let alone being one-shot, it is not clear if this criterion is realistic, in particular if probability distributions are subjective. Expected utility was proposed as a rational criterion from ?rst principles by Savage. In his view, the subjective probability distribution was - sically an artefact useful to implement a certain ordering of solutions.

This book deals with decision making in environments of significant data un certainty, with particular emphasis on operations and production management applications. For such environments, we suggest the use of the robustness ap proach to decision making, which assumes inadequate knowledge of the decision maker about the random state of nature and develops a decision that hedges against the worst contingency that may arise. The main motivating factors for a decision maker to use the robustness approach are: • It does not ignore uncertainty and takes a proactive step in response to the fact that forecasted values of uncertain parameters will not occur in most environments; • It applies to decisions of unique, non-repetitive nature, which are common in many fast and dynamically changing environments; • It accounts for the risk averse nature of decision makers; and • It recognizes that even though decision environments are fraught with data uncertainties, decisions are evaluated ex post with the realized data. For all of the above reasons, robust decisions are dear to the heart of opera tional decision makers. This book takes a giant first step in presenting decision support tools and solution methods for generating robust decisions in a variety of interesting application environments. Robust Discrete Optimization is a comprehensive mathematical programming framework for robust decision making.

Due to the increasing importance of product differentiation and collapsing product life cycles, a growing number of value-adding activities in the industry and service sector are organized in projects. Projects come in many forms, often taking considerable time and consuming a large amount of resources. The management and scheduling of projects represents a challenging task and project performance may have a considerable impact on an organization's competitiveness. This handbook presents state-of-the-art approaches to project management and scheduling. More than sixty contributions written by leading experts in the field provide an authoritative survey of recent developments. The book serves as a comprehensive reference, both, for researchers and project management professionals. The handbook consists of two volumes. Volume 1 is devoted to single-modal and multi-modal project scheduling. Volume 2 presents multi-project problems, project scheduling under uncertainty and vagueness, managerial approaches and a separate part on applications, case studies and information systems.

Running to almost 400 pages, and featuring more than 40 papers, this work on combinatorial optimization and applications will be seen as an important addition to the literature. It constitutes the refereed proceedings of the first International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications, COCOA 2007, held in Xi'an, China in August of that year. The 29 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers and 2 invited presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions and cover both theoretical issues and practical applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation, ISAAC 2015, held in Nagoya, Japan, in December 2015. The 65 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 180 submissions for inclusion in the book. The focus of the volume is on the following topics: computational geometry; data structures; combinatorial optimization and approximation algorithms; randomized algorithms; graph algorithms and FPT; computational complexity; graph drawing and planar graphs; online and streaming algorithms; and string and DNA algorithms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty, ECSQARU 2023, held in Arras, France, in September 2023. The 35 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections about Complexity and Database Theory; Formal Concept Analysis: Theoretical Advances; Formal Concept Analysis: Applications; Modelling and Explanation; Semantic Web and Graphs; Posters.

Combinatorial optimization is a multidisciplinary scientific area, lying in the interface of three major scientific domains: mathematics, theoretical computer science and management. The three volumes of the Combinatorial Optimization series aim to cover a wide range of topics in this area. These topics also deal with fundamental notions and approaches as with several classical applications of combinatorial optimization. Concepts of Combinatorial Optimization, is divided into three parts: - On the complexity of combinatorial optimization problems, presenting basics about worst-case and randomized complexity; - Classical solution methods, presenting the two most-known methods for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems, that are Branch-and-Bound and Dynamic Programming; - Elements from mathematical programming, presenting fundamentals from mathematical programming based methods that are in the heart of Operations Research since the origins of this field.

This book provides a broad coverage of the recent advances in robustness analysis in decision aiding, optimization, and analytics. It offers a comprehensive illustration of the challenges that robustness raises in different operations research and management science (OR/MS) contexts and the methodologies proposed from multiple perspectives. Aside from covering recent methodological developments, this volume also features applications of robust techniques in engineering and management, thus illustrating the robustness issues raised in real-world problems and their resolution within advances in OR/MS methodologies. Robustness analysis seeks to address issues by promoting solutions, which are acceptable under a wide set of hypotheses, assumptions and estimates. In OR/MS, robustness has been mostly viewed in the context of optimization under uncertainty. Several scholars, however, have emphasized the multiple facets of robustness analysis in a broader OR/MS perspective that goes beyond the traditional framework, seeking to cover the decision support nature of OR/MS methodologies as well. As new challenges emerge in a “big-data'” era, where the information volume, speed of flow, and complexity increase rapidly, and analytics play a fundamental role for strategic and operational decision-making at a global level, robustness issues such as the ones covered in this book become more relevant than ever for providing sound decision support through more powerful analytic tools.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications, COCOA 2013, held in Chengdu, China, in December 2013. The 36 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers feature original research in the areas of combinatorial optimization and its applications. In addition to theoretical results there are reports on experimental and applied research of general algorithmic interest.

Operations research often solves deterministic optimization problems based on elegantand conciserepresentationswhereall parametersarepreciselyknown. In the face of uncertainty, probability theory is the traditional tool to be appealed for, and stochastic optimization is actually a signi?cant sub-area in operations research. However, the systematic use of prescribed probability distributions so as to cope with imperfect data is partially unsatisfactory. First, going from a deterministic to a stochastic formulation, a problem may becomeintractable. Agoodexampleiswhengoingfromdeterministictostoch- tic scheduling problems like PERT. From the inception of the PERT method in the 1950’s, it was acknowledged that data concerning activity duration times is generally not perfectly known and the study of stochastic PERT was launched quite early. Even if the power of today’s computers enables the stochastic PERT to be addressed to a large extent, still its solutions often require simplifying assumptions of some kind. Another di?culty is that stochastic optimization problems produce solutions in the average. For instance, the criterion to be maximized is more often than not expected utility. This is not always a meaningful strategy. In the case when the underlying process is not repeated a lot of times, let alone being one-shot, it is not clear if this criterion is realistic, in particular if probability distributions are subjective. Expected utility was proposed as a rational criterion from ?rst principles by Savage. In his view, the subjective probability distribution was - sically an artefact useful to implement a certain ordering of solutions.