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Operations Research is a field whose major contribution has been to propose a rigorous fonnulation of often ill-defmed problems pertaining to the organization or the design of large scale systems, such as resource allocation problems, scheduling and the like. While this effort did help a lot in understanding the nature of these problems, the mathematical models have proved only partially satisfactory due to the difficulty in gathering precise data, and in formulating objective functions that reflect the multi-faceted notion of optimal solution according to human experts. In this respect linear programming is a typical example of impressive achievement of Operations Research, that in its dete...
This volume presents a catalogue of over 2000 doctoral theses by Africans in all fields of mathematics, including applied mathematics, mathematics education and history of mathematics. The introduction contains information about distribution by country, institutions, period, and by gender, about mathematical density, and mobility of mathematicians. Several appendices are included (female doctorate holders, doctorates in mathematics education, doctorates awarded by African universities to non-Africans, doctoral theses by non-Africans about mathematics in Africa, activities of African mathematicians at the service of their communities). Paulus Gerdes compiled the information in his capacity of Chairman of the African Mathematical Union Commission for the History of Mathematics in Africa (AMUCHMA). The book contains a preface by Mohamed Hassan, President of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and Executive Director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). (383 pp.)
This book provides an overview of the main methods and results in the formal study of the human decision-making process, as defined in a relatively wide sense. A key aim of the approach contained here is to try to break down barriers between various disciplines encompassed by this field, including psychology, economics and computer science. All these approaches have contributed to progress in this very important and much-studied topic in the past, but none have proved sufficient so far to define a complete understanding of the highly complex processes and outcomes. This book provides the reader with state-of-the-art coverage of the field, essentially forming a roadmap to the field of decisio...
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.
Nowadays, decision problems are pervaded with incomplete knowledge, i.e., imprecision and/or uncertain information, both in the problem description and in the preferential information. In this volume leading scientists in the field address various theoretical and practical aspects related to the handling of this incompleteness. The problems discussed are taken from multi-objective linear programming, rationality considerations in preference modelling, non-probabilistic utility theory, data fusion, group decision making and multicriteria decision aid. The book is oriented towards researchers, graduate and postgraduate students in decision analysis, fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic, and operations research/management science.
This volume is devoted to models and methods in multiple objectives decision making. The importance of the multiple dimensions of decision making was first recognised during the 1960s and since then progress has been made in that theoretical or application oriented contributions may now be categorized under two main headings:- Multiattribute Decision Making (MADM) which concerns the sorting, the ranking or the evaluation of objects of choice according to several criteria and Multiobjective Decision Making (MODM) which deals with the vector optimization in mathematical programming. The above are also presented in the context of various applications, namely banking, environment, health, manpower, media, portfolio and traffic control, resulting in a book for a wide variety of readers.
The success of metaheuristics on hard single-objective optimization problems is well recognized today. However, many real-life problems require taking into account several conflicting points of view corresponding to multiple objectives. The use of metaheuristic optimization techniques for multi-objective problems is the subject of this volume. The book includes selected surveys, tutorials and state-of-the-art research papers in this field, which were first presented at a free workshop jointly organized by the French working group on Multi-objective Mathematical Programming (PM2O) and the EURO working group on Metaheuristics in December 2002. It is the first book which considers both various metaheuristics and various kind of problems (e.g. combinatorial problems, real situations, non-linear problems) applied to multiple objective optimization. Metaheuristics used include: genetic algorithms, ant colony optimization, simulated annealing, scatter search, etc. Problems concern timetabling, vehicle routing, and more. Methodological aspects, such as quality evaluation, are also covered.
The purpose of this book is to collect contributions that deal with the use of nature inspired metaheuristics for solving multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems. Such a collection intends to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art developments in this field, with the aim of motivating more researchers in operations research, engineering, and computer science, to do research in this area. As such, this book is expected to become a valuable reference for those wishing to do research on the use of nature inspired metaheuristics for solving multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, EMO 2009, held in Nantes, France in April 2009. The 39 revised full papers presented together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on theoretical analysis, uncertainty and noise, algorithm development, performance analysis and comparison, applications, MCDM Track, Many objectives, alternative methods, as well as EMO and MCDA.
J. CIimaco and C. H. Antunes After the pleasure which has been to host the community of researchers and practitioners in the area of multicriteria analysis (MA) in Coimbra in August 1994, this volume of proceedings based on the papers presented at the conference is the last step of that venture. Even though this may not be the appropriate place we cannot resist, however, the temptation to express herein some brief feelings about the conference. Almost everything concerning the conference organisation has been "handcrafted" by a small number of people, with the advantages and disadvantages that this approach generates. Our first word of acknowledgement is of course due to those who have had a...