The Vehicle Routing Problem : Latest Advances and New Challenges
The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been an especially active and fertile area of research. Over the past five to seven years, there have been numerous technological advances and exciting challenges that are of considerable interest to students, teachers, and researchers. The Vehicle Routing Problem: Latest Advances and New Challenges will focus on a host of significant technical advances that have evolved over the past few years for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems and variants. New approaches for solving VRPs have been developed from important methodological advances. These developments have resulted in faster solution algorithms, more accurate techniques, and an improvement in the ability to solve large-scale, complex problems.
The Next Wave in Computing, Optimization, and Decision Technologies
The first section contains two papers on network models. The second section focuses in integer and mixed integer programming. The third section contains papers in which heuristic search and metaheuristics are applied. Three papers using stochastic modeling comprise the fourth section. In the fifth section, the unifying theme is software and modeling. The sixth section contains four papers on classification, clustering, and ranking. Each article in the volume has been carefully reviewed and revised accordingly. Computer Science and Operations Research continue to have a synergistic relationship and this book represents the results of the cross-fertilization between OR/MS and CS/AI. It is this interface of OR/CS that makes possible advances that could not have been achieved in isolation. Taken collectively, these articles are indicative of the state-of-the-art in the interface between OR/MS and CS/AI and of the high-caliber research being conducted by members of the INFORMS Computing Society.
Telecommunications Planning : Innovations in Pricing, Network Design and Management
Focuses on the latest methodological developments in three key areas---pricing of telecommunications services, network design, and resource allocation. These three elements are most relevant to current telecommunications planning. The first five chapters cover global deregulation of the telecommunications industry, effective pricing and revenue management, as well as an understanding of competitive pressures are key factors that will improve revenue in telecommunications companies. These chapters present some novel ideas related to pricing (including auction-based pricing of network bandwidth) and modeling competition in the industry. The next seven chapters outline what successful telecommunications companies of the future will need to do in order to minimize their costs and still meet customer expectations. In this context the optimal design/provisioning of telecommunication networks plays an important role. These chapters focus on network design for a wide range of technologies including SONET, SDH, WDM, and MPLS. They include the latest research developments related to the modeling and solving of network design problems. The final six chapters provide insightful solutions to several resource allocation problems. Day-to-day management/control of telecommunications networks is dependant upon the optimal allocation of resources.
Telecommunications Modeling, Policy, and Technology
With rapid advances in telecommunications technology there are many new innovative applications. These advances in technology spawn new research problems. This volume is motivated by these advances in technology. Topics range from free-space optical networks to vehicular ad-hoc networks. The research contained in these papers cover a broad spectrum of issues. They range from the design of business models, tools for spectrum auctions, Internet charging schemes, Internet routing policies, and network design problems. Together, they address issues dealing both with engineering design and policy, and it is hoped that these papers will foster new ideas and research in their respective domains.



