Combinatorial optimization is the process of finding the best, or optimal, so lution for problems with a discrete set of feasible solutions. Applications arise in numerous settings involving operations management and logistics, such as routing, scheduling, packing, inventory and production management, lo cation, logic, and assignment of resources. The economic impact of combi natorial optimization is profound, affecting sectors as diverse as transporta tion (airlines, trucking, rail, and shipping), forestry, manufacturing, logistics, aerospace, energy (electrical power, petroleum, and natural gas), telecommu nications, biotechnology, financial services, and agriculture. While much progress has been made in finding exact (provably optimal) so lutions to some combinatorial optimization problems, using techniques such as dynamic programming, cutting planes, and branch and cut methods, many hard combinatorial problems are still not solved exactly and require good heuristic methods. Moreover, reaching "optimal solutions" is in many cases meaningless, as in practice we are often dealing with models that are rough simplifications of reality. The aim of heuristic methods for combinatorial op timization is to quickly produce good-quality solutions, without necessarily providing any guarantee of solution quality. Metaheuristics are high level procedures that coordinate simple heuristics, such as local search, to find solu tions that are of better quality than those found by the simple heuristics alone: Modem metaheuristics include simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, tabu search, GRASP, scatter search, ant colony optimization, variable neighborhood search, and their hybrids."

Telecommunications has had a major impact in all aspects of life inthe last century. There is little doubt that the transformation from theindustrial age to the information age has been fundamentally influencedby advances in telecommunications. Optimization problems areabundant in the telecommunications industry. The successful solutionof these problems has played an important role in the development oftelecommunications and its widespread use. Optimization problemsarise in the design of telecommunication systems and in theiroperation. The Handbook of Optimization in Telecommunicationsbrings together experts from around the world who use optimization tosolve problems that arise in telecommunications. The editors made aneffort to cover recent optimization developments that are frequentlyapplied to telecommunications.

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.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Learning and Optimization, LION 8, which was held in Gainesville, FL, USA, in February 2014. The 33 contributions presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. A large variety of topics are covered, such as algorithm configuration; multiobjective optimization; metaheuristics; graphs and networks; logistics and transportation; and biomedical applications.

Combinatorial optimization is the process of finding the best, or optimal, so lution for problems with a discrete set of feasible solutions. Applications arise in numerous settings involving operations management and logistics, such as routing, scheduling, packing, inventory and production management, lo cation, logic, and assignment of resources. The economic impact of combi natorial optimization is profound, affecting sectors as diverse as transporta tion (airlines, trucking, rail, and shipping), forestry, manufacturing, logistics, aerospace, energy (electrical power, petroleum, and natural gas), telecommu nications, biotechnology, financial services, and agriculture. While much progress has been made in finding exact (provably optimal) so lutions to some combinatorial optimization problems, using techniques such as dynamic programming, cutting planes, and branch and cut methods, many hard combinatorial problems are still not solved exactly and require good heuristic methods. Moreover, reaching "optimal solutions" is in many cases meaningless, as in practice we are often dealing with models that are rough simplifications of reality. The aim of heuristic methods for combinatorial op timization is to quickly produce good-quality solutions, without necessarily providing any guarantee of solution quality. Metaheuristics are high level procedures that coordinate simple heuristics, such as local search, to find solu tions that are of better quality than those found by the simple heuristics alone: Modem metaheuristics include simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, tabu search, GRASP, scatter search, ant colony optimization, variable neighborhood search, and their hybrids."

Optimization is an essential tool in every project in every large-scale organization, whether in business, industry, engineering, and science. In recent years, algorithmic advances and software and hardware improvements have given managers a powerful framework for making key decisions about everything from production planning to scheduling distribution.

This comprehensive resource brings together in one volume the major advances in the field. Distinguished contributors focus on the algorithmic and computational aspects of optimization, particularly the most recent methods for solving a wide range of decision-making problems. The book is divided into three main sections: algorithms, covering every type of programming; applications, where computational tools are put to work solving tasks in planning, production, distribution, scheduling and other decisions in project management; and software, a comprehensive introduction to languages and systems. Designed as a practical resource for proprammers and project planners and managers, it covers optimization problems in a wide range of settings, from the airline and aerospace industries to telecommunications, finance, health systems, biomedicine, and engineering.