The scope of this book is limited to heuristics, metaheuristics, and approximate methods and algorithms as applied to planning and scheduling problems. While it is not possible to give a comprehensive treatment of this topic in one book, the aim of this work is to provide the reader with a diverse set of planning and scheduling problems and different heuristic approaches to solve them. The problems range from traditional single stage and parallel machine problems to more modern settings such as robotic cells and flexible job shop networks. Furthermore, some chapters deal with deterministic problems while some others treat stochastic versions of the problems. Unlike most of the literature that deals with planning and scheduling problems in the manufacturing and production environments, in this book the environments were extended to nontraditional applications such as spatial scheduling (optimizing space over time), runway scheduling, and surgical scheduling. The solution methods used in the different chapters of the book also spread from well-established heuristics and metaheuristics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization to more recent ones such as Meta-RaPS.

The scope of this book is limited to heuristics, metaheuristics, and approximate methods and algorithms as applied to planning and scheduling problems. While it is not possible to give a comprehensive treatment of this topic in one book, the aim of this work is to provide the reader with a diverse set of planning and scheduling problems and different heuristic approaches to solve them. The problems range from traditional single stage and parallel machine problems to more modern settings such as robotic cells and flexible job shop networks. Furthermore, some chapters deal with deterministic problems while some others treat stochastic versions of the problems. Unlike most of the literature that deals with planning and scheduling problems in the manufacturing and production environments, in this book the environments were extended to nontraditional applications such as spatial scheduling (optimizing space over time), runway scheduling, and surgical scheduling. The solution methods used in the different chapters of the book also spread from well-established heuristics and metaheuristics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization to more recent ones such as Meta-RaPS.

The use of artificial intelligence, especially in the field of optimization is increasing day by day. The purpose of this book is to explore the possibility of using different kinds of optimization algorithms to advance and enhance the tools used for computer and electrical engineering purposes.

The book sheds light on medical cyber-physical systems while addressing image processing, microscopy, security, biomedical imaging, automation, robotics, network layers’ issues, software design, and biometrics, among other areas. Hence, solving the dimensionality conundrum caused by the necessity to balance data acquisition, image modalities, different resolutions, dissimilar picture representations, subspace decompositions, compressed sensing, and communications constraints. Lighter computational implementations can circumvent the heavy computational burden of healthcare processing applications. Soft computing, metaheuristic, and deep learning ascend as potential solutions to efficient super-resolution deployment. The amount of multi-resolution and multi-modal images has been augmenting the need for more efficient and intelligent analyses, e.g., computer-aided diagnosis via computational intelligence techniques. This book consolidates the work on artificial intelligence methods and clever design paradigms for healthcare to foster research and implementations in many domains. It will serve researchers, technology professionals, academia, and students working in the area of the latest advances and upcoming technologies employing smart systems’ design practices and computational intelligence tactics for medical usage. The book explores deep learning practices within particularly difficult computational types of health problems. It aspires to provide an assortment of novel research works that focuses on the broad challenges of designing better healthcare services.

This book highlights recent research on Hybrid Intelligent Systems and their various practical applications. It presents 56 selected papers from the 18th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (HIS 2018), which was held at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal from December 13 to 15, 2018. A premier conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence, HIS 2018 brought together researchers, engineers and practitioners whose work involves intelligent systems and their applications in industry. Including contributions by authors from over 30 countries, the book offers a valuable reference guide for all researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of Computer Science and Engineering.

This book comprises the select peer-reviewed proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology (InCITe-2023). It aims to provide a comprehensive and broad-spectrum picture of state-of-the-art research and development in decision intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, and enabling technologies for IoT, blockchain, and other futuristic computational technologies. It covers various topics that span cutting-edge, collaborative technologies and areas of computation. The content would serve as a rich knowledge repository on information & communication technologies, neural networks, fuzzy systems, natural language processing, data mining & warehousing, big data analytics, cloud computing, security, social networks and intelligence, decision-making and modeling, information systems, and IT architectures. This book provides a valuable resource for those in academia and industry.

Operations Research: A Practical Introduction is just that: a hands-on approach to the field of operations research (OR) and a useful guide for using OR techniques in scientific decision making, design, analysis and management. The text accomplishes two goals. First, it provides readers with an introduction to standard mathematical models and algorithms. Second, it is a thorough examination of practical issues relevant to the development and use of computational methods for problem solving. Highlights: All chapters contain up-to-date topics and summaries A succinct presentation to fit a one-term course Each chapter has references, readings, and list of key terms Includes illustrative and current applications New exercises are added throughout the text Software tools have been updated with the newest and most popular software Many students of various disciplines such as mathematics, economics, industrial engineering and computer science often take one course in operations research. This book is written to provide a succinct and efficient introduction to the subject for these students, while offering a sound and fundamental preparation for more advanced courses in linear and nonlinear optimization, and many stochastic models and analyses. It provides relevant analytical tools for this varied audience and will also serve professionals, corporate managers, and technical consultants.

Delineating the tremendous growth in this area, the Handbook of Approximation Algorithms and Metaheuristics covers fundamental, theoretical topics as well as advanced, practical applications. It is the first book to comprehensively study both approximation algorithms and metaheuristics. Starting with basic approaches, the handbook presents the methodologies to design and analyze efficient approximation algorithms for a large class of problems, and to establish inapproximability results for another class of problems. It also discusses local search, neural networks, and metaheuristics, as well as multiobjective problems, sensitivity analysis, and stability. After laying this foundation, the book applies the methodologies to classical problems in combinatorial optimization, computational geometry, and graph problems. In addition, it explores large-scale and emerging applications in networks, bioinformatics, VLSI, game theory, and data analysis. Undoubtedly sparking further developments in the field, this handbook provides the essential techniques to apply approximation algorithms and metaheuristics to a wide range of problems in computer science, operations research, computer engineering, and economics. Armed with this information, researchers can design and analyze efficient algorithms to generate near-optimal solutions for a wide range of computational intractable problems.

During the past decades scheduling has been among the most studied op- mization problemsanditisstillanactiveareaofresearch!Schedulingappears in many areas of science, engineering and industry and takes di?erent forms depending on the restrictions and optimization criteria of the operating en- ronments [8]. For instance, in optimization and computer science, scheduling has been de?ned as “the allocation of tasks to resources over time in order to achieve optimality in one or more objective criteria in an e?cient way” and in production as “production schedule, i. e. , the planning of the production or the sequence of operations according to which jobs pass through machines and is optimal with respect to certain optimization criteria. ” Although there is a standardized form of stating any scheduling problem, namely “e?cient allocation ofn jobs onm machines –which can process no more than one activity at a time– with the objective to optimize some - jective function of the job completion times”, scheduling is in fact a family of problems. Indeed, several parameters intervene in the problem de?nition: (a) job characteristics (preemptive or not, precedence constraints, release dates, etc. ); (b) resource environment (single vs. parallel machines, un- lated machines, identical or uniform machines, etc. ); (c) optimization criteria (minimize total tardiness, the number of late jobs, makespan, ?owtime, etc. ; maximize resource utilization, etc. ); and, (d) scheduling environment (static vs. dynamic,intheformerthenumberofjobstobeconsideredandtheirready times are available while in the later the number of jobs and their charact- istics change over time).

This book investigates in detail production scheduling technology in different kinds of shop environment to achieve sustainability manufacturing. Studies on shop scheduling have attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical, automation, computer, and industrial engineering. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of intelligent optimization and the significant influence of production scheduling in the manufacturing systems. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in intelligent optimization technology, shop scheduling, and green manufacturing systems or other scheduling applications.