This book is devoted to the study and optimization of spatiotemporal stochastic processes, that is, processes which develop simultaneously in space and time under random influences. These processes are seen to occur almost everywhere when studying the global behavior of complex systems, including:

- Physical and technical systems

- Population dynamics

- Neural networks

- Computer and telecommunication networks

- Complex production networks

- Flexible manufacturing systems

- Logistic networks and transportation systems

-Environmental engineering

Climate modelling and prediction

Earth surface models

Classical stochastic dynamic optimization forms the framework of the book. Taken as a whole, the project undertaken in the book is to establish optimality or near-optimality for Markovian policies in the control of spatiotemporal Markovian processes. The authors apply this general principle to different frameworks of Markovian systems and processes. Depending on the structure of the systems and the surroundings of the model classes the authors arrive at different levels of simplicity for the policy classes which encompass optimal or nearly optimal policies. A set of examples accompanies the theoretical findings, and these examples should demonstrate some important application areas for the theorems discussed.

Queueing systems and networks are being applied to many areas of technology today, including telecommunications, computers, satellite systems, and traffic processes. This timely book, written by 26 of the most respected and influential researchers in the field, provides an overview of fundamental queueing systems and networks as applied to these technologies.
Frontiers in Queueing: Models and Applications in Science and Engineering was written with more of an engineering slant than its predecessor, Advances in Queueing: Theory, Methods, and Open Problems. The earlier book was primarily concerned with methods, and was more theoretically oriented. This new volume, meant to be a sequel to the first book, was written by scientists and queueing theorists whose expertise is in technology and engineering, allowing readers to answer questions regarding the technicalities of related methods from the earlier book.
Each chapter in the book surveys the classes of queueing models and networks, or the applied methods in queueing, and is followed by a discussion of open problems and future research directions. The discussion of these future trends is especially important to novice researchers, students, and even their advisors, as it provides the perspectives of eminent scientists in each area, thus showing where research efforts should be focused. Frontiers in Queueing: Models and Applications in Science and Engineering also includes applications to vital areas of engineering and technology, specifically, telecommunications, computers and computer networks, satellite systems, traffic processes, and more applied methods such as simulation, statistics, and numerical methods. All researchers, from students to advanced professionals, can benefit from the sound advice and perspective of the contributors represented in this book.

Building on classical queueing theory mainly dealing with single node queueing systems, networks of queues, or stochastic networks has been a field of intensive research over the last three decades. Whereas the first breakthrough in queueing network theory was initiated by problems and work in operations research, the second breakthrough, as well as subsequent major work in the area, was closely related to computer science, particularly to performance analysis of complex systems in computer and communication science.The text reports on recent research and development in the area. It is centered around explicit expressions for the steady behavior of discrete time queueing networks and gives a moderately positive answer to the question of whether there can be a product form calculus in discrete time. Originating from a course given by the author at Hamburg University, this book is ideally suited as a text for courses on discrete time stochastic networks.