This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Multi-Objective Programming and Goal Programming: Theory & Appli cations (MOPGP'02) held in Nara, Japan on June 4-7, 2002. Eighty-two people from 16 countries attended the conference and 78 papers (including 9 plenary talks) were presented. MOPGP is an international conference within which researchers and prac titioners can meet and learn from each other about the recent development in multi-objective programming and goal programming. The participants are from different disciplines such as Optimization, Operations Research, Math ematical Programming and Multi-Criteria Decision Aid, whose common in terest is in multi-objective analysis. The first MOPGP Conference was held at Portsmouth, United Kingdom, in 1994. The subsequent conferenes were held at Torremolinos, Spain in 1996, at Quebec City, Canada in 1998, and at Katowice, Poland in 2000. The fifth conference was held at Nara, which was the capital of Japan for more than seventy years in the eighth century. During this Nara period the basis of Japanese society, or culture established itself. Nara is a beautiful place and has a number of historic monuments in the World Heritage List. The members of the International Committee of MOPGP'02 were Dylan Jones, Pekka Korhonen, Carlos Romero, Ralph Steuer and Mehrdad Tamiz.

This book gives the reader an insight into the state of the art in the field of multiobjective (linear, nonlinear and combinatorial) programming, goal programming and multiobjective metaheuristics. The 26 papers describe all relevant trends in this fields of research . They cover a wide range of topics ranging from theoretical investigations to algorithms, dealing with uncertainty, and applications to real world problems such as engineering design, water distribution systems and portfolio selection. The book is based on the papers of the seventh international conference on multiple objective programming and goal programming (MOPGP06).

Most real-life problems involve making decisions to optimally achieve a number of criteria while satisfying some hard or soft constraints. In this book several methods for solving such problems are presented by the leading experts in the area. The book also contains a number of very interesting application papers which demonstrate theoretical modelling, analysing and solution of real-life problems.

The book is dedicated to multi-objective methods in decision making. The first part which is devoted to theoretical aspects, covers a broad range of multi-objective methods such as multiple linear programming, vector optimisation, fuzzy goal programming, data envelopment analysis, game theory, and dynamic programming. The reader who is interested in practical applications, will find in the remaining parts a variety of approaches applied in numerous fields including production planning, logistics, marketing, and finance.

Problems with multiple objectives and criteria are generally known as multiple criteria optimization or multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. So far, these types of problems have typically been modelled and solved by means of linear programming. However, many real-life phenomena are of a nonlinear nature, which is why we need tools for nonlinear programming capable of handling several conflicting or incommensurable objectives. In this case, methods of traditional single objective optimization and linear programming are not enough; we need new ways of thinking, new concepts, and new methods - nonlinear multiobjective optimization. Nonlinear Multiobjective Optimization provides an extensive, up-to-date, self-contained and consistent survey, review of the literature and of the state of the art on nonlinear (deterministic) multiobjective optimization, its methods, its theory and its background. The amount of literature on multiobjective optimization is immense. The treatment in this book is based on approximately 1500 publications in English printed mainly after the year 1980. Problems related to real-life applications often contain irregularities and nonsmoothnesses. The treatment of nondifferentiable multiobjective optimization in the literature is rather rare. For this reason, this book contains material about the possibilities, background, theory and methods of nondifferentiable multiobjective optimization as well. This book is intended for both researchers and students in the areas of (applied) mathematics, engineering, economics, operations research and management science; it is meant for both professionals and practitioners in many different fields of application. The intention has been to provide a consistent summary that may help in selecting an appropriate method for the problem to be solved. It is hoped the extensive bibliography will be of value to researchers.

Although several books or monographs on multiobjective optimization under uncertainty have been published, there seems to be no book which starts with an introductory chapter of linear programming and is designed to incorporate both fuzziness and randomness into multiobjective programming in a unified way. In this book, five major topics, linear programming, multiobjective programming, fuzzy programming, stochastic programming, and fuzzy stochastic programming, are presented in a comprehensive manner. Especially, the last four topics together comprise the main characteristics of this book, and special stress is placed on interactive decision making aspects of multiobjective programming for human-centered systems in most realistic situations under fuzziness and/or randomness. Organization of each chapter is briefly summarized as follows: Chapter 2 is a concise and condensed description of the theory of linear programming and its algorithms. Chapter 3 discusses fundamental notions and methods of multiobjective linear programming and concludes with interactive multiobjective linear programming. In Chapter 4, starting with clear explanations of fuzzy linear programming and fuzzy multiobjective linear programming, interactive fuzzy multiobjective linear programming is presented. Chapter 5 gives detailed explanations of fundamental notions and methods of stochastic programming including two-stage programming and chance constrained programming. Chapter 6 develops several interactive fuzzy programming approaches to multiobjective stochastic programming problems. Applications to purchase and transportation planning for food retailing are considered in Chapter 7. The book is self-contained because of the three appendices and answers to problems. Appendix A contains a brief summary of the topics from linear algebra. Pertinent results from nonlinear programming are summarized in Appendix B. Appendix C is a clear explanation of the Excel Solver, one of the easiest ways to solve optimization problems, through the use of simple examples of linear and nonlinear programming.

The existence of neutral /indeterminacy degrees reflects the more practical aspects of decision-making scenarios. Thus, this paper has studied the intuitionistic fuzzy multiobjective linear programming problems (IFMOLPPs) under neutrosophic uncertainty. To highlight the degrees of neutrality in IFMOLPPs, we have investigated the neutrosophic optimization techniques with intuitionistic fuzzy parameters.

The paper presents a novel strategy for solving bi-level linear programming problem based on goal programming in neutrosophic numbers environment. Bi-level linear programming problem comprises of two levels namely upper or first level and lower or second level with one objective at each level. The objective function of each level decision maker and the system constraints are considered as linear functions with neutrosophic numbers of the form [p + q I], where p, q are real numbers and I represents indeterminacy.

“Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” has been created for publications on advanced studies in neutrosophy, neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics that started in 1995 and their applications in any field, such as the neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology, etc.