Hybrid Predictive Control for Dynamic Transport Problems develops methods for the design of predictive control strategies for nonlinear-dynamic hybrid discrete-/continuous-variable systems. The methodology is designed for real-time applications, particularly the study of dynamic transport systems. Operational and service policies are considered, as well as cost reduction. The control structure is based on a sound definition of the key variables and their evolution. A flexible objective function able to capture the predictive behaviour of the system variables is described. Coupled with efficient algorithms, mainly drawn from area of computational intelligence, this is shown to optimize performance indices for real-time applications. The framework of the proposed predictive control methodology is generic and, being able to solve nonlinear mixed integer optimization problems dynamically, is readily extendable to other industrial processes. The main topics of this book are: * hybrid predictive control (HPC) design based on evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO); * HPC based on EMO for dial-a-ride systems; and * HPC based on EMO for operational decisions in public transport systems. Hybrid Predictive Control for Dynamic Transport Problems is a comprehensive analysis of HPC and its application to dynamic transport systems. Introductory material on evolutionary algorithms is presented in summary in an appendix. The text will be of interest to control and transport engineers working on the operational optimization of transport systems and to academic researchers working with hybrid systems. The potential applications of the generic methods presented here to other process fields will make the book of interest to a wider group of researchers, scientists and graduate students working in other control-related disciplines.

The connected dominating set has been a classic subject studied in graph theory since 1975. Since the 1990s, it has been found to have important applications in communication networks, especially in wireless networks, as a virtual backbone. Motivated from those applications, many papers have been published in the literature during last 15 years. Now, the connected dominating set has become a hot research topic in computer science. In this book, we are going to collect recent developments on the connected dominating set, which presents the state of the art in the study of connected dominating sets. The book consists of 16 chapters. Except the 1st one, each chapter is devoted to one problem, and consists of three parts, motivation and overview, problem complexity analysis, and approximation algorithm designs, which will lead the reader to see clearly about the background, formulation, existing important research results, and open problems. Therefore, this would be a very valuable reference book for researchers in computer science and operations research, especially in areas of theoretical computer science, computer communication networks, combinatorial optimization, and discrete mathematics.

Sociological theories of crime include: theories of strain blame crime on personal stressors; theories of social learning blame crime on its social rewards, and see crime more as an institution in conflict with other institutions rather than as in- vidual deviance; and theories of control look at crime as natural and rewarding, and explore the formation of institutions that control crime. Theorists of corruption generally agree that corruption is an expression of the Patron-Client relationship in which a person with access to resources trades resources with kin and members of the community in exchange for loyalty. Some approaches to modeling crime and corruption do not involve an explicit simulation: rule based systems; Bayesian networks; game theoretic approaches, often based on rational choice theory; and Neoclassical Econometrics, a rational choice-based approach. Simulation-based approaches take into account greater complexities of interacting parts of social phenomena. These include fuzzy cognitive maps and fuzzy rule sets that may incorporate feedback; and agent-based simulation, which can go a step farther by computing new social structures not previously identified in theory. The latter include cognitive agent models, in which agents learn how to perceive their en- ronment and act upon the perceptions of their individual experiences; and reactive agent simulation, which, while less capable than cognitive-agent simulation, is adequate for testing a policy's effects with existing societal structures. For example, NNL is a cognitive agent model based on the REPAST Simphony toolkit.

The "EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr" was a winner in the Leading Edge Science Cluster competition run by the German federal Ministry of Education and Research. The mission and aim of the "EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr" is to facilitate tomorrow's individuality - in the sense of individual goods supply, mobility, and production - using 75 percent of today's resources. Efficiency - both in economical and ecological terms - is enabled by state-of-the-art and innovative logistical solutions including transportation, production and intralogistics. These proceedings "Efficiency and Logistics" give first answers from 27 research projects as an insight into the current state of research of Europe's leading research and development cluster in logistics and as a contribution to the discussion on how logistics as a science can help to cope with foreseeable resource shortage and sustainability as global challenges.

This book integrates multiple criteria concepts and methods for problems within the Risk, Reliability and Maintenance (RRM) context. The concepts and foundations related to RRM are considered for this integration with multicriteria approaches. In the book, a general framework for building decision models is presented and this is illustrated in various chapters by discussing many different decision models related to the RRM context. The scope of the book is related to ways of how to integrate Applied Probability and Decision Making. In Applied Probability, this mainly includes: decision analysis and reliability theory, amongst other topics closely related to risk analysis and maintenance. In Decision Making, it includes a broad range of topics in MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) and MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding; also known as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis). In addition to decision analysis, some of the topics related to Mathematical Programming area are briefly considered, such as multiobjective optimization, since methods related to these topics have been applied to the context of RRM. The book addresses an innovative treatment for the decision making in RRM, thereby improving the integration of fundamental concepts from the areas of both RRM and decision making. This is accomplished by presenting an overview of the literature on decision making in RRM. Some pitfalls of decision models when applying them to RRM in practice are discussed and guidance on overcoming these drawbacks is offered. The procedure enables multicriteria models to be built for the RRM context, including guidance on choosing an appropriate multicriteria method for a particular problem faced in the RRM context. The book also includes many research advances in these topics. Most of the multicriteria decision models that are described are specific applications that have been influenced by this research and the advances in this field. Multicriteria and Multiobjective Models for Risk, Reliability and Maintenance Decision Analysis is implicitly structured in three parts, with 12 chapters. The first part deals with MCDM/A concepts methods and decision processes. The second part presents the main concepts and foundations of RRM. Finally the third part deals with specific decision problems in the RRM context approached with MCDM/A models.

This is a new edition of Kleijnen's advanced expository book on statistical methods for the Design and Analysis of Simulation Experiments (DASE). Altogether, this new edition has approximately 50% new material not in the original book. More specifically, the author has made significant changes to the book's organization, including placing the chapter on Screening Designs immediately after the chapters on Classic Designs, and reversing the order of the chapters on Simulation Optimization and Kriging Metamodels. The latter two chapters reflect how active the research has been in these areas. The validation section has been moved into the chapter on Classic Assumptions versus Simulation Practice, and the chapter on Screening now has a section on selecting the number of replications in sequential bifurcation through Wald's sequential probability ration test, as well as a section on sequential bifurcation for multiple types of simulation responses. Whereas all references in the original edition were placed at the end of the book, in this edition references are placed at the end of each chapter. From Reviews of the First Edition: "Jack Kleijnen has once again produced a cutting-edge approach to the design and analysis of simulation experiments." (William E. BILES, JASA, June 2009, Vol. 104, No. 486)

Human and organizational factors have a substantial impact on the performance of planning and scheduling processes. Despite widespread and advanced decision support systems, human decision makers are still crucial to improve the operational performance in manufacturing industries. In this text, the state of the art in this area is discussed by experts from a wide variety of engineering and social science disciplines. Moreover, recent results from collaborative studies and a number of field cases are presented. The text is targeted at researchers and graduate students, but is also particularly useful for managers, consultants, and system developers to better understand how human performance can be advanced.

This book contains extended and revised versions of a set of selected papers from two workshops organized by the Euro Working Group on Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS), which were held in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Rome, Italy, in May and July 2013. From a total of 45 submissions, 15 papers were accepted for publication in this edition after being reviewed by at least three internationally known experts from the EWG-DSS Program Committee and external invited reviewers. The selected papers are representative of current research activities in the area of operational research and decision support systems, focusing on topics such as decision-making using social networks and Web resources; spatio-temporal Web-based decision making; group support systems; technical, legal, and social aspects of decision making; knowledge management and decision support systems; business intelligence and data warehousing; and negotiation support systems.

Analysis, assessment, and data management are core tools required for operation research analysts. The April 2011 conference held at the Helenic Military Academy addressed these issues with efforts to collect valuable recommendations for improving analysts' capabilities to assess and communicate the necessary qualitative data to military leaders. This unique volume is an outgrowth of the April conference and comprises of contributions from the fields of science, mathematics, and the military, bringing Greek research findings to the world. Topics cover a wide variety of mathematical methods used with application to defense and security. Each contribution considers directions and pursuits of scientists that pertain to the military as well as the theoretical background required for methods, algorithms, and techniques used in military applications. The direction of theoretical results in these applications is conveyed and open problems and future areas of focus are highlighted. A foreword will be composed by a member of N.A.T.O. or a ranking member of the armed forces. Topics covered include: applied OR and military applications, signal processing, scattering, scientific computing and applications, combat simulation and statistical modeling, satellite remote sensing, and applied informatics - cryptography and coding. The contents of this volume will be of interest to a diverse audience including military operations research analysts, the military community at large, and practitioners working with mathematical methods and applications to informatics and military science.

The book examines applications in two disparate fields linked by the importance of valuing information: public health and space. Researchers in the health field have developed some of the most innovative methodologies for valuing information, used to help determine, for example, the value of diagnostics in informing patient treatment decisions. In the field of space, recent applications of value-of-information methods are critical for informing decisions on investment in satellites that collect data about air quality, fresh water supplies, climate and other natural and environmental resources affecting global health and quality of life.

The volume is dedicated to Stephen Smale on the occasion of his 80th birthday.Besides his startling 1960 result of the proof of the Poincare conjecture for all dimensionsgreater than or equal to five, Smale's ground breaking contributions invarious fields in Mathematics have marked the second part of the 20th century andbeyond. Stephen Smale has done pioneering work in differential topology, globalanalysis, dynamical systems, nonlinear functional analysis, numerical analysis, theoryof computation and machine learning as well as applications in the physical andbiological sciences and economics. In sum, Stephen Smale has manifestly brokenthe barriers among the different fields of mathematics and dispelled some remainingprejudices. He is indeed a universal mathematician. Smale has been honoredwith several prizes and honorary degrees including, among others, the Fields Medal(1966), The Veblen Prize (1966), the National Medal of Science (1996) and theWolfPrize (2006/2007).

This book presents recent developments and results found by participants of the Third International Conference on the Dynamics of Information Systems, which took place at the University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA on February 16-18, 2011. The purpose of this conference was to bring together scientists and engineers from industry, government, and universities to exchange knowledge and results in a broad range of topics relevant to the theory and practice of the dynamics of information systems. Dynamics of Information plays an increasingly critical role in our society. The influence of information on social, biological, genetic, and military systems must be better understood to achieve large advances in the capability and understanding of these systems. Applications are widespread and include: research in evolutionary theory, optimization of information workflow, military applications, climate networks, collision work, and much more. Dynamics of Information plays an increasingly critical role in our society. The influence of information on social, biological, genetic, and military systems must be better understood to achieve large advances in the capability and understanding of these systems. Applications are widespread and include: research in evolutionary theory, optimization of information workflow, military applications, climate networks, collision work, and much more.

The book is a benefit for graduate and postgraduate students in the areas of operations research, decision theory, optimization theory, linear algebra, interval analysis and fuzzy sets. The book will also be useful for the researchers in the respective areas. The first part of the book deals with decision making problems and procedures that have been established to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view. Procedures based on pairwise comparisons are thoroughly investigated. In the second part we investigate optimization problems where objective functions and constraints are characterized by extremal operators such as maximum, minimum or various triangular norms (t-norms). Matrices in max-min algebra are useful in applications such as automata theory, design of switching circuits, logic of binary relations, medical diagnosis, Markov chains, social choice, models of organizations, information systems, political systemsand clustering. The input data in real problems are usually not exact and can be characterized by interval values."

"Decision Systems and Non-stochastic Randomness" presents the first mathematical formalization of the statistical regularities of non-stochastic randomness and demonstrates how these regularities extend the standard probability-based model of decision making under uncertainty, allowing for the description of uncertain mass events that do not fit standard stochastic models. The formalism of statistical regularities developed in this book will have a significant influence on decision theory and information theory as well as numerous other disciplines.

This book aims at illustrating strategies to account for uncertainty in complex systems described by computer simulations. When optimizing the performances of these systems, accounting or neglecting uncertainty may lead to completely different results; therefore, uncertainty management is a major issues in simulation-optimization. Because of its wide field of applications, simulation-optimization issues have been addressed by different communities with different methods, and from slightly different perspectives. Alternative approaches have been developed, also depending on the application context, without any well-established method clearly outperforming the others. This editorial project brings together - as chapter contributors - researchers from different (though interrelated) areas; namely, statistical methods, experimental design, stochastic programming, global optimization, metamodeling, and design and analysis of computer simulation experiments. Editors' goal is to take advantage of such a multidisciplinary environment, to offer to the readers a much deeper understanding of the commonalities and differences of the various approaches to simulation-based optimization, especially in uncertain environments. Editors aim to offer a bibliographic reference on the topic, enabling interested readers to learn about the state-of-the-art in this research area, also accounting for potential real-world applications to improve also the state-of-the-practice. Besides researchers and scientists of the field, the primary audience for the proposed book includes PhD students, academic teachers, as well as practitioners and professionals. Each of these categories of potential readers present adequate channels for marketing actions, e.g. scientific, academic or professional societies, internet-based communities, and authors or buyers of related publications.

This book presents solutions to the general problem of single period portfolio optimization. It introduces different linear models, arising from different performance measures, and the mixed integer linear models resulting from the introduction of real features. Other linear models, such as models for portfolio rebalancing and index tracking, are also covered. The book discusses computational issues and provides a theoretical framework, including the concepts of risk-averse preferences, stochastic dominance and coherent risk measures. The material is presented in a style that requires no background in finance or in portfolio optimization; some experience in linear and mixed integer models, however, is required. The book is thoroughly didactic, supplementing the concepts with comments and illustrative examples.

This book showcases a large variety of multiple criteria decision applications (MCDAs), presenting them in a coherent framework provided by the methodology chapters and the comments accompanying each case study. The chapters describing MCDAs invite the reader to experiment with MCDA methods and perhaps develop new variants using data from these case studies or other cases they encounter, equipping them with a broader perception of real-world problems and how to overcome them with the help of MCDAs.

This monograph addresses several critical problems to the operations of shipping lines and ports, and provides algorithms and mathematical models for use by shipping lines and port authorities for decision support. One of these problems is the repositioning of container ships in a liner shipping network in order to adjust the network to seasonal shifts in demand or changes in the world economy. We provide the first problem description and mathematical model of repositioning and define the liner shipping fleet repositioning problem (LSFRP). The LSFRP is characterized by chains of interacting activities with a multi-commodity flow over paths defined by the activities chosen. We first model the problem without cargo flows with a variety of well-known optimization techniques, as well as using a novel method called linear temporal optimization planning that combines linear programming with partial-order planning in a branch-and-bound framework. We then model the LSFRP with cargo flows, using several different mathematical models as well as two heuristic approaches. We evaluate our techniques on a real-world dataset that includes a scenario from our industrial collaborator. We show that our approaches scale to the size of problems faced by industry, and are also able to improve the profit on the reference scenario by over US$14 million.

Understanding both leadership and change have been recurrent and popular themes within the business, management and organization studies literature. However, our understanding of leadership and organizational change in combination is far more limited. The Leadership of Organizational Change offers a critical review of the evolution of leadership and organizational change for the past thirty-five years, taking stock of what we know, identifying what we do not know, and establishing how the study of the leadership of change should advance. In the late seventies and early eighties, as interest in managing and leading change was fuelled by the competitive threat of Asia in general and Japan in particular as perceived by western businesses and governments, Burns (1978) writing in his landmark book Leadership at this time, referred to an intellectual crisis: "The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility of so many of the men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises to the full need for it. The fundamental crisis underlying mediocrity is intellectual. If we know all too much about our leaders, we know far too little about leadership." While the study of managing change has benefitted from sustained critical scrutiny, particularly in the last decade, it is believed that this is to have been at the expense of critical scrutiny of leading change. The Leadership of Organizational Change critically reviews how the study of leading change has advanced since 1978 and the crisis of intellectual mediocrity.

Based on the 2005 publication The Financial Appraisal Profile Model , this book discusses how the FAP model can present an integrated process for the appraisal of financial and strategic benefits and the assessment of risk in ICT (Information Communication Technology) project proposals.

This book includes case studies that examine the application of operations research to improve or increase efficiency in industry and operational activities. This collection of "living case studies" is all based on the author's 30-year career of consulting and advisory work. These true-to life industrial applications illustrate the research and development of solutions, as well as potential implementation and integration problems that may occur when adopting these methods into a business. Among the topics covered in the chapters include optimization in circuit board manufacturing, Decision Support System (DSS) for plant loading and dispatch planning, as well as development of important test procedures for tyre and pharma industry with shelf life constraints. In particular, the study on deckle optimization should be of great help to managers in paper industry and consultants for development of deckle optimization software. The application of operations research throughout the industry makes it an ideal guide for industrial executives, professionals and practitioners responsible for quality and productivity improvement.

Operational Research (OR) deals with the use of advanced analytical methods to support better decision-making. It is multidisciplinary with strong links to management science, decision science, computer science and many application areas such as engineering, manufacturing, commerce and healthcare. In the study of emergent behaviour in complex adaptive systems, Agent-based Modelling & Simulation (ABMS) is being used in many different domains such as healthcare, energy, evacuation, commerce, manufacturing and defense. This collection of articles presents a convenient introduction to ABMS with papers ranging from contemporary views to representative case studies. The OR Essentials series presents a unique cross-section of high quality research work fundamental to understanding contemporary issues and research across a range of Operational Research (OR) topics. It brings together some of the best research papers from the esteemed Operational Research Society and its associated journals, also published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Although several monographs and edited volumes have discussed scheduling in general, most of these works survey the field by contributing a single chapter to production systems like flow shops. Flow Shop Scheduling: Theoretical Results, Algorithms, and Applications is solely dedicated to bringing together a huge body of knowledge on the subject, along distinct design features, in order to help scholars and practitioners easily identify problems of interest. This monograph has been organized into ten distinct flow shop systems and explores their connections. The chapters cover flow shop systems including two-machine, flexible, stochastic, and more. Outside of the traditional flow shops that require a job never revisits any stage, this book also examines the reentrant flow shop, in which a job may cycle back and be reprocessed at the same station or sequence of stations, multiple times. The authors have made the material accessible to a broad readership, using simplified notation and revealing unifying concepts. The results unique to flow shop research should provide the seed for research in other areas of scheduling and in optimization in general.

Multicriteria analysis is one of the most important fields of decision science. This book gives an outline of the formulation of an appropriate model and presents a comprehensive summary of the most popular methods for solving multicriteria decision problems. In addition to the classical approach the book introduces fuzzy and stochastic methodology, models with uncertainty, social choice and conflict resolution. All methods are illustrated with easy to follow simple examples. At the end of each chapter detailed case studies are given in water and environment management including inter-basin water transfer, urban water management, water allocation, groundwater quality management, forest treatment, ranking water resources projects, reservoir planning, water distribution network design and long-term watershed management. The new methodology and the wide variety of case studies are not easily accessible elsewhere.

This textbook presents the basics of game theory both on an undergraduate level and on a more advanced mathematical level. It is the second, revised version of the successful 2008 edition. The book covers most topics of interest in game theory, including cooperative game theory. Part I presents introductions to all these topics on a basic yet formally precise level. It includes chapters on repeated games, social choice theory, and selected topics such as bargaining theory, exchange economies, and matching. Part II goes deeper into noncooperative theory and treats the theory of zerosum games, refinements of Nash equilibrium in strategic as well as extensive form games, and evolutionary games. Part III covers basic concepts in the theory of transferable utility games, such as core and balancedness, Shapley value and variations, and nucleolus. Some mathematical tools on duality and convexity are collected in Part IV. Every chapter in the book contains a problem section. Hints, answers and solutions are included.