Marking the 30th anniversary of the European Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ECMS), this inspirational text/reference reviews significant advances in the field of modelling and simulation, as well as key applications of simulation in other disciplines. The broad-ranging volume presents contributions from a varied selection of distinguished experts chosen from high-impact keynote speakers and best paper winners from the conference, including a Nobel Prize recipient, and the first president of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation (also abbreviated to ECMS). This authoritative book will be of great value to all researchers working in the field of modelling and simulation, in addition to scientists from other disciplines who make use of modelling and simulation approaches in their work.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the European Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ECMS), this inspirational text/reference reviews significant advances in the field of modelling and simulation, as well as key applications of simulation in other disciplines. The broad-ranging volume presents contributions from a varied selection of distinguished experts chosen from high-impact keynote speakers and best paper winners from the conference, including a Nobel Prize recipient, and the first president of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation (also abbreviated to ECMS). This authoritative book will be of great value to all researchers working in the field of modelling and simulation, in addition to scientists from other disciplines who make use of modelling and simulation approaches in their work.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Analytical and Stochastic Modelling Techniques and Applications, ASMTA 2012, held in Grenoble, France, in June 2012. The 20 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on queueing systems; networking applications; Markov chains; stochastic modelling.

It is our great pleasure to present the proceedings of the 16th International ConferenceonAnalyticalandStochasticModellingTechniquesandApplications (ASMTA 2009) that took place in Madrid. The conference has become an established annual event in the agenda of the experts of analytical modelling and performance evaluation in Europe and internationally. This year the proceedings continued to be published as part of Springer's prestigiousLecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. This is another sign of the growing con?dence in the quality standards and procedures followed in the reviewing process and the program compilation. Following the traditions of the conference, ASMTA 2009, was honored to have a distinguished keynote speaker in the person of Kishor Trivedi. Professor Trivedi holds the Hudson Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringatDukeUniversity, Durham, NC, USA. HeistheDuke-SiteDirector of an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center between NC State University and Duke University for carrying out applied research in computing and communications. He has been on the Duke faculty since 1975. He is the author of a well-known text entitled Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing and Computer Science Applications, published by Prentice-Hall, the secondeditionofwhichhasjustappeared. Hehasalsopublishedtwootherbooks entitled Performance and Reliability Analysis of Computer Systems, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, and Queueing Networks and Markov Chains, by John Wiley. He is also known for his work on the modelling and analysis of software aging and rejuvenation. The conference maintained the tradition of high-quality programs with an acceptance rate of about 40%.

Itisourgreatpleasuretopresenttheproceedingsofthe15thInternationalConf- ence on Analytical and Stochastic Modelling Techniques and Applications (ASMTA2008)thattookplaceonthebeautifulislandofCyprusforthe?rsttime. The conference has become an important annual event in the ?elds of - alytical modelling and performance evaluation in Europe and internationally. Nevertheless, e?orts have been made year after year to raise the standard and the quality of the programme.This yearthe proceedings are published as partof Springer's prestigiousLecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. This is another sign of the growing con?dence in the quality standards and procedures followed in the reviewing process and the programme compilation. The conference was honored to have a distinguished keynote speaker in the personofRaymondMariefromIRISA/INRIA, France, whoisaprominent?gure ofthe analyticalmodellingcommunity inEuropeandworldwide.The conference had a high-qualityprogrammewith anacceptanceratio of 40%.The programme comprised 22 high-quality papers organized into 7 sessions. Almost every paper was peer reviewed by three reviewers from the International Programme C- mittee. The reviewers were truly wonderful this year, as well, and in most cases the reviewsprovidedvaluable comments thatcontributedto increasingthe qu- ity of the ?nal versions of the papers. In many cases, discussion panels were also organized when the reviews were not decisive. We would therefore like to give a special thanks to all the members of the International Programme Committee for the excellent work in the reviewing process and the subsequent discussion panels during the selection process.

In emergency and disaster scenarios, it is vital to have a stable and effective infrastructure for relaying communication to the public. With the advent of new technologies, more options are available for enhancing communication systems. Multimedia Services and Applications in Mission Critical Communication Systems is a comprehensive source of academic research on the challenges and solutions in creating stable mission critical systems and examines methods to improve system architecture and resources. Highlighting innovative perspectives on topics such as quality of service, performance metrics, and intrusion detection, this book is ideally designed for practitioners, professionals, researchers, graduate students, and academics interested in public safety communication systems.