This book presents extended versions of selected papers from the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making from 2016 to 2018. The papers address all stages of decision-making under constraints: (1) precisely formulating the problem of multi-criteria decision-making; (2) determining when the corresponding decision problem is algorithmically solvable; (3) finding the corresponding algorithms and making these algorithms as efficient as possible; and (4) taking into account interval, probabilistic, and fuzzy uncertainty inherent in the corresponding decision-making problems. In many application areas, it is necessary to make effective decisions under constraints, and there are several area-specific techniques for such decision problems. However, because they are area-specific, it is not easy to apply these techniques in other application areas. As such, the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making focus on cross-fertilization between different areas, attracting researchers and practitioners from around the globe. The book includes numerous papers describing applications, in particular, applications to engineering, such as control of unmanned aerial vehicles, and vehicle protection against improvised explosion devices.

This book describes new algorithms and ideas for making effective decisions under constraints, including applications in control engineering, manufacturing (how to optimally determine the production level), econometrics (how to better predict stock market behavior), and environmental science and geosciences (how to combine data of different types). It also describes general algorithms and ideas that can be used in other application areas. The book presents extended versions of selected papers from the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making (CoProd’XX) from 2013 to 2016. These workshops, held in the US (El Paso, Texas) and in Europe (Würzburg, Germany, and Uppsala, Sweden), have attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world. It is of interest to practitioners who benefit from the new techniques, to researchers who want to extend the ideas from these papers to new application areas and/or further improve the corresponding algorithms, and to graduate students who want to learn more – in short, to anyone who wants to make more effective decisions under constraints.

In many application areas, it is necessary to make effective decisions under constraints. Several area-specific techniques are known for such decision problems; however, because these techniques are area-specific, it is not easy to apply each technique to other applications areas. Cross-fertilization between different application areas is one of the main objectives of the annual International Workshops on Constraint Programming and Decision Making. Those workshops, held in the US (El Paso, Texas), in Europe (Lyon, France) and in Asia (Novosibirsk, Russia), from 2008 to 2012, have attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world. This volume presents extended versions of selected papers from those workshops. These papers deal with all stages of decision making under constraints: (1) formulating the problem of multi-criteria decision making in precise terms, (2) determining when the corresponding decision problem is algorithmically solvable; (3) finding the corresponding algorithms and making these algorithms as efficient as possible and (4) taking into account interval, probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainty inherent in the corresponding decision making problems. The resulting application areas include environmental studies (selecting the best location for a meteorological tower), biology (selecting the most probable evolution history of a species), and engineering (designing the best control for a magnetic levitation train).

A logic view of 0-1 integer programming problems, providing new insights into the structure of problems that can lead the researcher to more effective solution techniques depending on the problem class. Operations research techniques are integrated into a logic programming environment. The first monographic treatment that begins to unify these two methodological approaches. Logic-based methods for modelling and solving combinatorial problems have recently started to play a significant role in both theory and practice. The application of logic to combinatorial problems has a dual aspect. On one hand, constraint logic programming allows one to declaratively model combinatorial problems over an appropriate constraint domain, the problems then being solved by a corresponding constraint solver. Besides being a high-level declarative interface to the constraint solver, the logic programming language allows one also to implement those subproblems that cannot be naturally expressed with constraints. On the other hand, logic-based methods can be used as a constraint solving technique within a constraint solver for combinatorial problems modelled as 0-1 integer programs.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 23nd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP 2017, held in Melbourne, Australia from August 28, 2017 until September 1, 2017. The conference is colocated with the 20th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2017) and the 33rd International Conference on Logic Programming. The 46 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The scope of the contributions includes all aspects of computing with constraints, including theory, algorithms, environments, languages, models, systems, and applications such as decision making, resource al location, scheduling, configuration, and planning. The papers are grouped into the following tracks: technical track; application track; machine learning & CP track; operations research & CP track; satisfiability & CP track, test and verification & CP track; journal & sister conference track.

Constraint reasoning has matured over the last three decades with contributions from a diverse community of researchers in artificial intelligence, databases and programming languages, operations research, management science, and applied mathematics. In Constraint Processing, Rina Dechter synthesizes these contributions, as well as her own significant work, to provide the first comprehensive examination of the theory that underlies constraint processing algorithms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP 2011, held in Perugia, Italy, September 12-16, 2011. The 51 revised full papers and 7 short papers presented together with three invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on algorithms, environments, languages, models and systems, applications such as decision making, resource allocation and agreement technologies.