Time out of mind: Subben's checklist revisited: A partial description of the development of quantitative OR papers over a period of 25 years

This short paper aims to investigate some of the historical developments of one classic, well-cited and highly esteemed scientific journal in the domain of quantitative operations research - namely the INFORMS journal Operations Research - over a period of 25 years between 1981 and 2006. As such this paper, and the journal in question, represents one representative attempt to analyze - for the purpose of possible future generalization - how research production has evolved, and evolves, over time. Among the general developments that we think we can trace are that (a) the historical overviews (i.e., literature surveys) in the articles, as well as the list of references, somewhat counter-intuitively shrink over time, while (b) the motivating and modelling parts grow. We also attempt to characterize - in some detail - the appearance and character, over time, of the most cited, as well as the least cited, papers over the years studied. In particular, we find that many of the least cited papers are quite imbalanced. For example, some of them include one main section only, and the least cited papers also have shorter reference lists. We also analyse the articles' utilization of important buzz words representing the constitutive parts of an OR journal paper, based on Subben's checklist (Larsson and Patriksson, 2014, 2016). Based on a word count of these buzz words we conclude through a citation study, utilizing a collection of particularly highly or little cited papers, that there is a quite strong positive correlation between a journal paper being highly cited and its degree of utilization of this checklist

Editorial: Sweet sixteen

This is the traditional triennial note used by the editors to give the readers of 4OR information on the state of the journal and its future. In the 3years that have passed since the last editorial note (Liberti et al. in Q J Oper 13:1–13, 2015), three volumes (each containing four issues) of the journal have been published: vol. 13 (2015), vol. 14 (2016), and vol. 15 (2017)

Internet of Things in urban waste collection

Nowadays, the waste collection management has an important role in urban areas. This paper faces this issue and proposes the application of a metaheuristic for the optimization of a weekly schedule and routing of the waste collection activities in an urban area. Differently to several contributions in literature, fixed periodic routes are not imposed. The results significantly improve the performance of the company involved, both in terms of resources used and costs saving

Bio-inspired computation: where we stand and what's next

In recent years, the research community has witnessed an explosion of literature dealing with the adaptation of behavioral patterns and social phenomena observed in nature towards efficiently solving complex computational tasks. This trend has been especially dramatic in what relates to optimization problems, mainly due to the unprecedented complexity of problem instances, arising from a diverse spectrum of domains such as transportation, logistics, energy, climate, social networks, health and industry 4.0, among many others. Notwithstanding this upsurge of activity, research in this vibrant topic should be steered towards certain areas that, despite their eventual value and impact on the field of bio-inspired computation, still remain insufficiently explored to date. The main purpose of this paper is to outline the state of the art and to identify open challenges concerning the most relevant areas within bio-inspired optimization. An analysis and discussion are also carried out over the general trajectory followed in recent years by the community working in this field, thereby highlighting the need for reaching a consensus and joining forces towards achieving valuable insights into the understanding of this family of optimization techniques

Bio-inspired computation: where we stand and what's next

In recent years, the research community has witnessed an explosion of literature dealing with the adaptation of behavioral patterns and social phenomena observed in nature towards efficiently solving complex computational tasks. This trend has been especially dramatic in what relates to optimization problems, mainly due to the unprecedented complexity of problem instances, arising from a diverse spectrum of domains such as transportation, logistics, energy, climate, social networks, health and industry 4.0, among many others. Notwithstanding this upsurge of activity, research in this vibrant topic should be steered towards certain areas that, despite their eventual value and impact on the field of bio-inspired computation, still remain insufficiently explored to date. The main purpose of this paper is to outline the state of the art and to identify open challenges concerning the most relevant areas within bio-inspired optimization. An analysis and discussion are also carried out over the general trajectory followed in recent years by the community working in this field, thereby highlighting the need for reaching a consensus and joining forces towards achieving valuable insights into the understanding of this family of optimization techniques

4OR comes of age: Editorial note

This is the traditional triennial note used by the Editors to give the readers of 4OR information on the state of the journal and its future. In the three years that have passed since the last editorial note, three volumes (each containing four issues) of the journal have been published: vol. 16 (2018), vol. 17 (2019), and vol. 18 (2020)

Optimization for Decision Making II

In the current context of the electronic governance of society, both administrations and citizens are demanding the greater participation of all the actors involved in the decision-making process relative to the governance of society. This book presents collective works published in the recent Special Issue (SI) entitled “Optimization for Decision Making II”. These works give an appropriate response to the new challenges raised, the decision-making process can be done by applying different methods and tools, as well as using different objectives. In real-life problems, the formulation of decision-making problems and the application of optimization techniques to support decisions are particularly complex and a wide range of optimization techniques and methodologies are used to minimize risks, improve quality in making decisions or, in general, to solve problems. In addition, a sensitivity or robustness analysis should be done to validate/analyze the influence of uncertainty regarding decision-making. This book brings together a collection of inter-/multi-disciplinary works applied to the optimization of decision making in a coherent manner