The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Techniques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimization problems. A very large number of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry. Essays and Surveys in Metaheuristics goes beyond the recent conference-oriented volumes in Metaheuristics, with its focus on surveys of recent developments of the main metaheuristics. Well-known specialists have written surveys on the following subjects: simulated annealing (E. Aarts and J. Korst, The Netherlands), noising methods (I. Charon and O. Hudry, France), strategies for the parallel implementation of metaheuristics (V.-D. Cung and C. Roucairol, France, and S.L. Martins and C.C. Ribeiro, Brazil), greedy randomized adaptive search procedures (P. Festa, Italy, and M.G.C. Resende, USA), tabu search (M. Gendreau, Canada), variable neighborhood search (P. Hansen and N. Mladenovic, Canada), ant colonies (V. Maniezzo and A. Carbonaro, Italy), and evolutionary algorithms (H. MA1/4hlenbein and Th. Mahnig, Germany). Several further essays address issues or variants of metaheuristics, as well as innovative orsuccessful applications of metaheuristics to classical or new combinatorial optimization problems.

This is the first book to cover GRASP (Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedures), a metaheuristic that has enjoyed wide success in practice with a broad range of applications to real-world combinatorial optimization problems. The state-of-the-art coverage and carefully crafted pedagogical style lends this book highly accessible as an introductory text not only to GRASP, but also to combinatorial optimization, greedy algorithms, local search, and path-relinking, as well as to heuristics and metaheuristics, in general. The focus is on algorithmic and computational aspects of applied optimization with GRASP with emphasis given to the end-user, providing sufficient information on the broad spectrum of advances in applied optimization with GRASP. For the more advanced reader, chapters on hybridization with path-relinking and parallel and continuous GRASP present these topics in a clear and concise fashion. Additionally, the book offers a very complete annotated bibliography of GRASP and combinatorial optimization. For the practitioner who needs to solve combinatorial optimization problems, the book provides a chapter with four case studies and implementable templates for all algorithms covered in the text. This book, with its excellent overview of GRASP, will appeal to researchers and practitioners of combinatorial optimization who have a need to find optimal or near optimal solutions to hard combinatorial optimization problems.

The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Techniques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimization problems. A very large number of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry. Essays and Surveys in Metaheuristics goes beyond the recent conference-oriented volumes in Metaheuristics, with its focus on surveys of recent developments of the main metaheuristics. Well-known specialists have written surveys on the following subjects: simulated annealing (E. Aarts and J. Korst, The Netherlands), noising methods (I. Charon and O.Hudry, France), strategies for the parallel implementation of metaheuristics (V.-D. Cung and C. Roucairol, France, and S.L. Martins and C.C. Ribeiro, Brazil), greedy randomized adaptive search procedures (P. Festa, Italy, and M.G.C. Resende, USA), tabu search (M. Gendreau, Canada), variable neighborhood search (P. Hansen and N. Mladenovic, Canada), ant colonies (V. Maniezzo and A. Carbonaro, Italy), and evolutionary algorithms (H. Muhlenbein and Th. Mahnig, Germany). Several further essays address issues or variants of metaheuristics, as well as innovative or successful applications of metaheuristics to classical or new combinatorial optimization problems.

This book introduces solutions for sports scheduling problems in a variety of settings. In particular the book covers timetabling, the traveling tournament problem, carryover minimization, breaks minimization, tournament design, tournament planning, and referee assignment. A rich selection of applications to sports such as football, baseball, basketball, cricket or hockey are employed to illustrate the methods and techniques. In a step-by-step tutorial format the book describes the use of graph theory concepts, local search operators and integer programming in the context of sports scheduling. The methods presented in this book are essential to sports scheduling in all its dimensions, from tournaments that are followed by millions of people across the world, with broadcast rights that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in some competitions, to amateur leagues that require coordination and logistical efforts due to the large number of tournaments and competitors.

The Third International Workshop on Experimental and E?cient Algorithms (WEA 2004) was held in Angra dos Reis (Brazil), May 25-28, 2004. TheWEAworkshopsaresponsoredbytheEuropeanAssociationforTheo- tical Computer Science (EATCS). They are intended to provide an international forum for researchers in the areas of design, analysis, and experimental eval- tion of algorithms. The two preceding workshops in this series were held in Riga (Latvia, 2001) and Ascona (Switzerland, 2003). This proceedings volume comprises 40 contributed papers selected by the Program Committee along with the extended abstracts of the invited lectures presentedbyRichardKarp(UniversityofCaliforniaatBerkeley, USA), Giuseppe Italiano (University of Rome "Tor Vergata," Italy), and Christos Kaklamanis (University of Patras, Greece). As the organizer and chair of this wokshop, I would like to thank all the authors who generously supported this project by submitting their papers for publication in thisvolume. Iamalso grateful to theinvited lecturers, who kindly accepted our invitation. For their dedication and collaboration in the refereeing procedure, I would like also to express my gratitude to the members of the Program Committee: E. Amaldi (Italy), J. Blazewicz (Poland), V.-D. Cung (France), U. Derigs (G- many), J. Diaz (Spain), M. Gendreau (Canada), A. Goldberg (USA), P. Hansen (Canada), T. Ibaraki (Japan), K. Jansen (Germany), S. Martello (Italy), C.C. McGeoch (USA), L.S. Ochi (Brazil), M.G.C. Resende (USA), J. Rolim (Sw- zerland), S. Skiena (USA), M. Sniedovich (Australia), C.C. Souza (Brazil), P.