Heuristic and Approximation Algorithms and Their Applications
     
within the
10th WSEAS International Conferences on COMPUTERS
Vouliagmeni, Athens, Greece, July 13-15, 2006
http://www.worldses.org/conferences/2006/greece/iccomp/index.html

 

There are many optimization problems that for larger instances cannot be solved in a reasonable amount of time for their NP-completeness or NP-hardness. This implies the necessity of using the approximation or heuristic approaches instead of enumerating ones to get good solutions. Approximation algorithms are algorithms that guarantee that the "distance" of their solutions from the optimum is in the worst case restricted by a mathematically proved upper bound. The quality of an approximation algorithm is mostly measured by its performance ratio, which is given by the ratio of the achieved solution and the optimum.
Besides approximation algorithms, heuristics, mainly stochastic heuristics (metaheuristics) may be used. They do not guarantee bounds for the worst case as the approximation methods do, but in practice seem to provide good results.
 

Topics:

Major topics of interest include the following problems and methods, but are not limited to:

  • Graph theory problems (Hamiltonian path, graph colouring, graph matching, …)

  • Network optimization (Steiner tree problems, multicommodity flows, …)

  • Telecommunications optimization and distributed databases (bandwidth allocation, multicast routing, distributed file and placement, fragment allocation, …)

  • Scheduling problems (job shops, flow shops, resource-constrained scheduling, multiprocessor scheduling, …)

  • Combinatorial optimization problems (bin packing, knapsack problem, set covering, generalized assignment problem, set partitioning, …)

  • Routing problems (Traveling salesman problem, Chinese postman problem, vehicle routing problem, …)

  • Robot motion planning

  • Heuristic methods and their problem-oriented parameter settings (genetic algorithms, genetic programming, memetic algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu-search, differential evolution, ant systems, particle swarm optimization, neural networks, …) and their hybrid combinations

  • New proofs of NP-hardness/NP-completeness of selected problems

  • New proofs of approximation ratios

  • Solving problems under uncertainty (fuzzy graph problems, fuzzy optimization, ...)

  • New algorithms and data structures decreasing their time complexity (including polynomial algorithms)

Organizer:

Assoc. Prof. Milos Seda
Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
Institute of Automation and Computer Science, Brno, Czech Republic
E-mail: seda@fme.vutbr.cz

Program Committee:

Jarmo Alander, University of Vaasa, Finland Jarmo.Alander@hut.fi

Tomas Brandejsky, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic brandejsky@fd.cvut.cz

Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland kacprzyk@ibspan.waw.pl

Branko Katalinic, Vienna University of Technology, Austria katalinic@mail.ift.tuwien.ac.at

Raul Suarez Feijoo, Polytechnical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain raul.suarez@upc.es

Marian Mach, Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia Marian.Mach@tuke.sk

Cristian Munteanu, Institute for Systems and Robotics, Lisboa, Portugal cmunteanu@isr.ist.utl.pt

Martin Pelikan, University of Missouri, St. Louis, USA pelikan@cs.umsl.edu

Conor Ryan, University of Limerick, Ireland Conor.Ryan@ul.ie

Konrad Swanepoel, University of South Africa swanekj@unisa.ac.za

Ivica Veza, University of Split, Croatia iveza@fesb.hr
 


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IMPORTANT DATES and MORE INFORMATION FOR THE SESSION:


 http://www.worldses.org/conferences/2006/greece/iccomp/index.html

 

Brief Biography of the Organizer:

Milos Seda graduated from Brno University of Technology in 1976 (majoring in Technical Cybernetics) and at Masaryk University of Brno in 1985 (majoring in Mathematical Computer Science), where he received the degree of RNDr. in 1986. He received his Ph.D. degree in Technical Cybernetics in 1998 and Assoc. Prof. degree in Applied Mathematics in 2001. Since 1986 he has been engaged at the Brno University of Technology, and since 2000 he has been director of the Institute of Automation and Computer Science. His work is concerned with graph theory, computational geometry, combinatorial optimization, scheduling manufacturing processes, applications of fuzzy sets and database systems. He has published more than 140 works.