An insight into the latest results from the world of operations research - a wide-ranging field, as is shown by the book's 24 sections, corresponding to the conference program itself. Although problems of a primarily methodological nature are discussed, the emphasis is placed firmly on practical subjects, such as reports from the fields of healthcare, environmental protection, logistics and traffic engineering. This selection also clearly illustrates the extent to which OR is spreading into and already interwoven in other scientific disciplines.

The articles included in the volume cover a range of diverse topics linked by a common theme: the use of formal modelling techniques to promote better understanding of financial markets and improve management of financial operations. Apart from a theoretical discussion, most of the papers model validation or verification using market data. This collection of articles sets the framework for other studies that could link theory and practice.

The symposium Operations Research 2007 was held from September 5-7, 2007 at the Saarland University in Saarbru ̈cken. This international conference is at the same time the annual meeting of the German - erations Research Society (GOR). The transition in Germany (and many other countries in Europe) from a production orientation to a service society combined with a continuous demographic change generated a need for intensi?ed Op- ations Research activities in this area. On that account this conference has been devoted to the role of Operations Research in the service industry. The links to Operations Research are manifold and include many di?erent topics which are particularly emphasized in scienti?c sections of OR 2007. More than 420 participants from 30 countries made this event very international and successful. The program consisted of three p- nary,elevensemi-plenaryandmorethan300contributedpresentations, which had been organized in 18 sections. During the conference, the GOR Dissertation and Diploma Prizes were awarded. We congratulate all winners, especially Professor Wolfgang Domschke from the Da- stadt University of Technology, on receiving the GOR Scienti?c Prize Award.

The volume contains a selection of manuscripts of lectures presented at the International Symposi um on Operations Research (SOR 96). The Symposium took place at the Technical University of Braunschweig, September 3-6, 1996. SOR 96 was organized under the auspices of the two German societies of Operations Research, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Operations Research (DGOR) and Gesellschaft fur Mathematik, Okonomie and Operations Research (GMOOR) in cooperation with the Working Group Discrete Optimization of the IFIP (WG7.4). Since 1995, DGOR and GMOORjointly prepare the Symposium as a common annual conference. In particular, the annual general meetings of the DGOR, the GMOOR and the WG7.4 took place during the conference. The Symposi~m had 527 participants from 32 countries around the world, including 92 partici pants from Eastern Europe. The Symposium obviously attracts an international audience of workers fully covering the broad spectrum of Operations Research and related areas in economics, mathema tics and computer science. The importance of a highly interdisciplinary field as Operations Research is increasing owing to the growth in applications in related disciplines. Technological advances in computer science and algorithmic mathematics are crucial for attacking the great challenges waiting in the areas of applications of Operations Research effectively. As a participant of SOR 96 one could well observe the current pace of achievements. Many of these results are in these proceedings. The program consisted of two plenary, 17 semiplenary, and 335 contributed lectures in 18 sections.

This proceedings volume contains a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on Operations Research (SOR 2002).The contributions cover the broad interdisciplinary spectrum of Operations Research and present recent advances in theory, development of methods, and applications in practice. Subjects covered are Production, Logistics and Supply Chain Production, Marketing and Data Analysis, Transportation and Traffic, Scheduling and Project Management, Telecommunication and Information Technology, Energy and Environment, Public Economy, Health, Agriculture, Education, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Risk Management, Continuous Optimization, Discrete and Combinatorial Optimization, Stochastic and Dynamic Programming, Simulation, Control Theory, Systems Dynamics, Dynamic Games, Game Theory, Auctioning and Bidding, Experimental Economics, Econometrics, Statistics and Mathematical Economics, Fuzzy Logic, Multicriteria Decision Making, Decision Theory.

This volume contains a selection of papers referring to lectures presented at the symposium Operations Research 2006 held at the University of Karlsruhe. The symposium presented the state of the art in Operations Research and related areas in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science and demonstrated the broad applicability of its core themes, placing particular emphasis on Basel II, one of the most topical challenges of Operations Research.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) are powerful search and optimisation techniques inspired by the mechanisms of natural evolution. They imitate, on an abstract level, biological principles such as a population based approach, the inheritance of information, the variation of information via crossover/mutation, and the selection of individuals based on fitness. The most well-known class of EA are Genetic Algorithms (GA), which have received much attention not only in the scientific community lately. Other variants of EA, in particular Genetic Programming, Evolution Strategies, and Evolutionary Programming are less popular, though very powerful too. Traditionally, most practical applications of EA have appeared in the technical sector. Management problems, for a long time, have been a rather neglected field of EA-research. This is surprising, since the great potential of evolutionary approaches for the business and economics domain was recognised in pioneering publications quite a while ago. John Holland, for instance, in his seminal book Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (The University of Michigan Press, 1975) identified economics as one of the prime targets for a theory of adaptation, as formalised in his reproductive plans (later called Genetic Algorithms).