Constraint Programming and Decision Making: Theory and Applications

Constraint Programming and Decision Making: Theory and Applications
Author: Martine Ceberio
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319617532

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.

Constraint-Based Scheduling

Constraint-Based Scheduling
Author: Philippe Baptiste
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1461514797

Constraint Programming is a problem-solving paradigm that establishes a clear distinction between two pivotal aspects of a problem: (1) a precise definition of the constraints that define the problem to be solved and (2) the algorithms and heuristics enabling the selection of decisions to solve the problem. It is because of these capabilities that Constraint Programming is increasingly being employed as a problem-solving tool to solve scheduling problems. Hence the development of Constraint-Based Scheduling as a field of study. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the most widely used Constraint-Based Scheduling techniques. Following the principles of Constraint Programming, the book consists of three distinct parts: The first chapter introduces the basic principles of Constraint Programming and provides a model of the constraints that are the most often encountered in scheduling problems. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 are focused on the propagation of resource constraints, which usually are responsible for the "hardness" of the scheduling problem. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are dedicated to the resolution of several scheduling problems. These examples illustrate the use and the practical efficiency of the constraint propagation methods of the previous chapters. They also show that besides constraint propagation, the exploration of the search space must be carefully designed, taking into account specific properties of the considered problem (e.g., dominance relations, symmetries, possible use of decomposition rules). Chapter 9 mentions various extensions of the model and presents promising research directions.

Black Box Optimization, Machine Learning, and No-Free Lunch Theorems

Black Box Optimization, Machine Learning, and No-Free Lunch Theorems
Author: Panos M. Pardalos
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2021-05-27
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030665151

This edited volume illustrates the connections between machine learning techniques, black box optimization, and no-free lunch theorems. Each of the thirteen contributions focuses on the commonality and interdisciplinary concepts as well as the fundamentals needed to fully comprehend the impact of individual applications and problems. Current theoretical, algorithmic, and practical methods used are provided to stimulate a new effort towards innovative and efficient solutions. The book is intended for beginners who wish to achieve a broad overview of optimization methods and also for more experienced researchers as well as researchers in mathematics, optimization, operations research, quantitative logistics, data analysis, and statistics, who will benefit from access to a quick reference to key topics and methods. The coverage ranges from mathematically rigorous methods to heuristic and evolutionary approaches in an attempt to equip the reader with different viewpoints of the same problem.

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming
Author: J. Christopher Beck
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 750
Release: 2017-08-22
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319661582

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 Programming and Decision Making

Constraint Programming and Decision Making
Author: Martine Ceberio
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319042807

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).

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming
Author: Gilles Pesant
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 765
Release: 2015-08-12
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319232193

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP 2015, held in Cork, Ireland, in August/September 2015. This edition of the conference was part of George Boole 200, a celebration of the life and work of George Boole who was born in 1815 and worked at the University College of Cork. It was also co-located with the 31st International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2015). The 48 revised papers presented together with 3 invited talks and 16 abstract papers were carefully selected from numerous submissions. The scope of CP 2014 includes all aspects of computing with constraints, including theory, algorithms, environments, languages, models, systems, and applications such as decision making, resource allocation, schedulling, configuration, and planning.

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming -- CP 2011

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming -- CP 2011
Author: Jimmy Lee
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 854
Release: 2011-09-02
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642237851

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.

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming
Author: Thomas Schiex
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 799
Release: 2019-09-23
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 303030048X

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP 2019, held in Stamford, CT, USA, France, in September/October 2019. The 44 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. They deal with all aspects of computing with constraints including theory, algorithms, environments, languages, models, systems, and applications such as decision making, resource allocation, scheduling, configuration, and planning. The papers were organized according to the following topics/tracks: technical track; application track; multi-agent and parallel CP track; testing and verification track; CP and data science track; computational sustainability; and CP and life sciences track.

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP98

Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP98
Author: Michael Maher
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 495
Release: 1998-10-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3540652248

Constraints have emerged as the basis of a representational and computational paradigm that draws from many disciplines and can be brought to bear on many problem domains. This volume contains papers dealing with all aspects of c- puting with constraints. In particular, there are several papers on applications of constraints, re?ecting the practical usefulness of constraint programming. The papers were presented at the 1998 International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP’98), held in Pisa, Italy, 26{30 - tober, 1998. It is the fourth in this series of conferences, following conferences in Cassis (France), Cambridge (USA), and Schloss Hagenberg (Austria). We received 115 high quality submissions. In addition, 7 abstracts submissions were not followed by a full paper, hence were not counted as submissions. The program committee selected 29 high quality papers after thorough refereeing by at least 3 experts and further discussion by committee members. We thank the referees and the program committee for the time and e ort spent in reviewing the papers. The program committee invited three speakers: { Joxan Ja ar { Peter Jeavons { Patrick Prosser Their papers are in this volume.