Petri nets do not designate a single modeling formalism. In fact, newcomers to the field confess sometimes to be a little puzzled by the diversity of formalisms that are recognized under this "umbrella". Disregarding some extensions to the theoretical modeling capabilities, and looking at the level of abstraction of the formalisms, Condition/Event, Elementary, Place/Transition, Predicate/Transition, Colored, Object Oriented... net systems are frequently encountered in the literature. On the other side, provided with appropriate interpretative extensions, Controled Net Systems, Marking Diagrams (the Petri net generalization of State Diagrams), or the many-many variants in which time can be explicitly incorporated -Time(d), Deterministic, (Generalized) Stochastic, Fuzzy...- are defined. This represents another way to define practical formalisms that can be obtained by the "cro- product" of the two mentioned dimensions. Thus Petri nets constitute a modeling paradigm, understandable in a broad sense as "the total pattern of perceiving, conceptualising, acting, validating and valuing associated with a particular image of reality that prevails in a science or a branch of science" (Thomas S. Kuhn).

This book addresses two of the most difficult and computationally intractable classes of problems: discrete resource constrained scheduling, and discrete-continuous scheduling. The first part of the book discusses problems belonging to the first class, while the second part deals with problems belonging to the second class. Both parts together offer valuable insights into the possibility of implementing modern techniques and tools with a view to obtaining high-quality solutions to practical and, at the same time, computationally difficult problems. It offers a valuable source of information for practitioners dealing with the real-world scheduling problems in industry, management and administration. The authors have been working on the respective problems for the last decade, gaining scientific recognition through publications and active participation in the international scientific conferences, and their results are obtained using population-based methods. Dr E. Ratajczk-Ropel explores multiple agent and A-Team concepts, while Dr A. Skakovski focuses on evolutionary algorithms with a particular focus on the population learning paradigm.

Impulsive Control in Continuous and Discrete-Continuous Systems is an up-to-date introduction to the theory of impulsive control in nonlinear systems. This is a new branch of the Optimal Control Theory, which is tightly connected to the Theory of Hybrid Systems. The text introduces the reader to the interesting area of optimal control problems with discontinuous solutions, discussing the application of a new and effective method of discontinuous time-transformation. With a large number of examples, illustrations, and applied problems arising in the area of observation control, this book is excellent as a textbook or reference for a senior or graduate-level course on the subject, as well as a reference for researchers in related fields.

The book's website (with databases and other support materials) can be accessed here. Praise for the Second Edition: The second edition introduces an especially broad set of statistical methods ... As a lecturer in both transportation and marketing research, I find this book an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate, Master’s and Ph.D. students, covering topics from simple descriptive statistics to complex Bayesian models. ... It is one of the few books that cover an extensive set of statistical methods needed for data analysis in transportation. The book offers a wealth of examples from the transportation field. —The American Statistician Statistical and Econometric Methods for Transportation Data Analysis, Third Edition offers an expansion over the first and second editions in response to the recent methodological advancements in the fields of econometrics and statistics and to provide an increasing range of examples and corresponding data sets. It describes and illustrates some of the statistical and econometric tools commonly used in transportation data analysis. It provides a wide breadth of examples and case studies, covering applications in various aspects of transportation planning, engineering, safety, and economics. Ample analytical rigor is provided in each chapter so that fundamental concepts and principles are clear and numerous references are provided for those seeking additional technical details and applications. New to the Third Edition Updated references and improved examples throughout. New sections on random parameters linear regression and ordered probability models including the hierarchical ordered probit model. A new section on random parameters models with heterogeneity in the means and variances of parameter estimates. Multiple new sections on correlated random parameters and correlated grouped random parameters in probit, logit and hazard-based models. A new section discussing the practical aspects of random parameters model estimation. A new chapter on Latent Class Models. A new chapter on Bivariate and Multivariate Dependent Variable Models. Statistical and Econometric Methods for Transportation Data Analysis, Third Edition can serve as a textbook for advanced undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. students in transportation-related disciplines including engineering, economics, urban and regional planning, and sociology. The book also serves as a technical reference for researchers and practitioners wishing to examine and understand a broad range of statistical and econometric tools required to study transportation problems.

This book serves as an introductory text to optimization theory in normed spaces and covers all areas of nonlinear optimization. It presents fundamentals with particular emphasis on the application to problems in the calculus of variations, approximation and optimal control theory. The reader is expected to have a basic knowledge of linear functional analysis.