Linear programming has attracted the interest of mathematicians since World War II when the first computers were constructed. Early attempts to apply linear programming methods practical problems failed, in part because of the inexactness of the data used to create the models. This book presents a comprehensive treatment of linear optimization with inexact data, summarizing existing results and presenting new ones within a unifying framework.

Linear programming has attracted the interest of mathematicians since World War II when the first computers were constructed. Early attempts to apply linear programming methods practical problems failed, in part because of the inexactness of the data used to create the models. This book presents a comprehensive treatment of linear optimization with inexact data, summarizing existing results and presenting new ones within a unifying framework.

This book covers state-of-the-art optimization methods and their applications in wide range especially for researchers and practitioners who wish to improve their knowledge in this field. It consists of 13 chapters divided into two parts: (I) Engineering applications, which presents some new applications of different methods, and (II) Applications in various areas, where recent contributions of state-of-the-art optimization methods to diverse fields are presented.

This volume collects peer-reviewed short papers presented at the Optimization and Decision Science conference (ODS 2022) held in Florence (Italy) from August 30th to September 2nd, 2022, organized by the Global Optimization Laboratory within the University of Florence and AIRO (the Italian Association for Operations Research). The book includes contributions in the fields of operations research, optimization, problem solving, decision making and their applications in the most diverse domains. Moreover, a special focus is set on the challenging theme Operations Research: inclusion and equity. The work offers 30 contributions, covering a wide spectrum of methodologies and applications. Specifically, they feature the following topics: (i) Variational Inequalities, Equilibria and Games, (ii) Optimization and Machine Learning, (iii) Global Optimization, (iv) Optimization under Uncertainty, (v) Combinatorial Optimization, (vi) Transportation and Mobility, (vii) Health Care Management, and (viii) Applications. This book is primarily addressed to researchers and PhD students of the operations research community. However, due to its interdisciplinary content, it will be of high interest for other closely related research communities.

This book describes new algorithms and ideas for making effective decisions under constraints, including applications in control engineering, manufacturing (how to optimally determine the production level), econometrics (how to better predict stock market behavior), and environmental science and geosciences (how to combine data of different types). It also describes general algorithms and ideas that can be used in other application areas. The book presents extended versions of selected papers from the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making (CoProd’XX) from 2013 to 2016. These workshops, held in the US (El Paso, Texas) and in Europe (Würzburg, Germany, and Uppsala, Sweden), have attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world. It is of interest to practitioners who benefit from the new techniques, to researchers who want to extend the ideas from these papers to new application areas and/or further improve the corresponding algorithms, and to graduate students who want to learn more – in short, to anyone who wants to make more effective decisions under constraints.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Integrated Uncertainty in Knowledge Modelling and Decision Making, IUKM 2020, held in Phuket, Thailand, in November 2020.* The 35 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The papers deal with all aspects of uncertainty modelling and management and are organized in topical sections on uncertainty management and decision support; machine learning; machine learning applications; econometric applications; and statistical methods. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Optimization and Learning, OLA 2021, held in Catania, Italy, in June 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online. The 27 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The papers presented in the volume are organized in topical sections on ​synergies between optimization and learning; learning for optimization; machine learning and deep learning; transportation and logistics; optimization; applications of learning and optimization methods.

Although the notion is a relatively recent one, the notions and principles of Granular Computing (GrC) have appeared in a different guise in many related fields including granularity in Artificial Intelligence, interval computing, cluster analysis, quotient space theory and many others. Recent years have witnessed a renewed and expanding interest in the topic as it begins to play a key role in bioinformatics, e-commerce, machine learning, security, data mining and wireless mobile computing when it comes to the issues of effectiveness, robustness and uncertainty. The Handbook of Granular Computing offers a comprehensive reference source for the granular computing community, edited by and with contributions from leading experts in the field. Includes chapters covering the foundations of granular computing, interval analysis and fuzzy set theory; hybrid methods and models of granular computing; and applications and case studies. Divided into 5 sections: Preliminaries, Fundamentals, Methodology and Algorithms, Development of Hybrid Models and Applications and Case Studies. Presents the flow of ideas in a systematic, well-organized manner, starting with the concepts and motivation and proceeding to detailed design that materializes in specific algorithms, applications and case studies. Provides the reader with a self-contained reference that includes all pre-requisite knowledge, augmented with step-by-step explanations of more advanced concepts. The Handbook of Granular Computing represents a significant and valuable contribution to the literature and will appeal to a broad audience including researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of Computational Intelligence, pattern recognition, fuzzy sets and neural networks, system modelling, operations research and bioinformatics.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, Environmental Management Handbook, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about environmental problems and their corresponding management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 400 contributors, all experts in their field. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management are presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management Addresses new and cutting-edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food–energy–water nexus, socio-ecological systems, and more Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function, and offers strategies on how to best manage them Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today In this third volume, Managing Soils and Terrestrial Systems, the general concepts and processes of the geosphere with its related soil and terrestrial systems are introduced. It explains how these systems function and provides strategies on how to best manage them. It serves as an excellent resource for finding basic knowledge on the geosphere systems and includes important problems and solutions that environmental managers face today. This book practically demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used in studying environmental management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third Workshop on Engineering Applications, WEA 2016, held in Bogotá, Colombia, in September 2016. The 35 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 128 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computer science; computational intelligence; simulation systems; fuzzy sets and systems; power systems; miscellaneous applications.