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 volume contains the proceedings of the 200 I International Conference on Operations Research (OR 2(01) held at the Gerhard-Mercator-University Duisburg, September 3-5,2001. OR 200 1 was organized under the auspices of the German Society of Operations Research, Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR e. V.). The conference and the annual general meeting were attended by 360 participants from 20 countries. The presentation of 220 papers was organized in 15 sections. According to Duisburg as hosting city for this event OR 200 1 emphasized on contributions of OR in the areas of energy, transport and traftk. The program consisted of2 plenary lectures (Reinhard Selten and Jörg Hennerkes) and 15 invited semiplenary lectures. 97 papers were submitted for publication. Following the advice of the section chairs the program committee decided to accept 59 papers for this volume. The selected manuscripts will be published also in electronic form on the W orld Wide Web at http://www.uni-duisburg.de/or200 1. We want to thank all referees and authors for delivering their final manuscript in due time. We are also grateful to the other members of the local organizing committee and especially to Stefan Krebs, Corinna Schu and David Betge for the perfect conference management. Roland Düsing, Ralph Gollmer and Steffen Stock supported us in editing the abstracts and the final version of this proceeding volume. Last but not least thanks to all the assistants and student assistants for their operations on OR 2001 in Duisburg.

These proceedings provide information on the most recent advances in operations research and related areas in economics, mathematics, and computer science, contributed by academics and practitioners from around the world.

Operations Research (OR) is a fast-evolving field, which is having a significant impact on its neighbouring disciplines of Business Analytics and Data Science, and on contemporary business and management practices. This handbook provides a comprehensive and cutting edge collection of studies in the area. Views differ on what should be included within the scope of OR. The editors of this volume have taken the view that an inclusive stance is the most helpful, both for theory and practice. Real-world problems often require consideration from both ‘softer’ and ‘harder’ perspectives and need consideration of both predictive and prescriptive problems. In accordance with this inclusive approach to OR, the book is divided into six parts, covering Discrete Optimization, Continuous Optimization, Heuristic Search Optimization, Forecasting, Simulation and Prediction, Problem Structuring and Behavioural OR, and finally some recent OR Applications. This wide-ranging handbook includes a culturally diverse collection of authors, with different perspectives and backgrounds around Operations Research. It will be of tremendous value to researchers, students and practitioners in the field of OR

This book contains a selection of refereed papers presented at the “International Conference on Operations Research (OR 2013)” which took place at Erasmus University Rotterdam September 3-6, 2013. The conference was jointly organized by the German and the Dutch OR Society. More than 800 scientists and students from over 50 countries attended OR 2013 and presented more than 600 papers in parallel topical streams, as well as special award sessions. The theme of the conference and its proceedings is "Impact on People, Business and Society".

This volume contains a selection of papers referring to lectures presented at the symposium "Operations Research 2003" (OR03) held at the Ruprecht Karls-Universitiit Heidelberg, September 3 - 5, 2003. This international con ference took place under the auspices of the German Operations Research So ciety (GOR) and of Dr. Erwin Teufel, prime minister of Baden-Wurttemberg. The symposium had about 500 participants from countries all over the world. It attracted academians and practitioners working in various field of Opera tions Research and provided them with the most recent advances in Opera tions Research and related areas in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. The program consisted of 4 plenary and 13 semi-plenary talks and more than 300 contributed papers selected by the program committee to be presented in 17 sections. Due to a limited number of pages available for the proceedings volume, the length of each article as well as the total number of accepted contributions had to be restricted. Submitted manuscripts have therefore been reviewed and 62 of them have been selected for publication. This refereeing procedure has been strongly supported by the section chairmen and we would like to express our gratitude to them. Finally, we also would like to thank Dr. Werner Muller from Springer-Verlag for his support in publishing this proceedings volume.

Optimization problems arising in practice usually contain several random parameters. Hence, in order to obtain optimal solutions being robust with respect to random parameter variations, the mostly available statistical information about the random parameters should be considered already at the planning phase. The original problem with random parameters must be replaced by an appropriate deterministic substitute problem, and efficient numerical solution or approximation techniques have to be developed for those problems. This proceedings volume contains a selection of papers on modelling techniques, approximation methods, numerical solution procedures for stochastic optimization problems and applications to the reliability-based optimization of concrete technical or economic systems.