In its thousands of years of history, mathematics has made an extraordinary ca reer. It started from rules for bookkeeping and computation of areas to become the language of science. Its potential for decision support was fully recognized in the twentieth century only, vitally aided by the evolution of computing and communi cation technology. Mathematical optimization, in particular, has developed into a powerful machinery to help planners. Whether costs are to be reduced, profits to be maximized, or scarce resources to be used wisely, optimization methods are available to guide decision making. Opti mization is particularly strong if precise models of real phenomena and data of high quality are at hand - often yielding reliable automated control and decision proce dures. But what, if the models are soft and not all data are around? Can mathematics help as well? This book addresses such issues, e. g. , problems of the following type: - An elevator cannot know all transportation requests in advance. In which order should it serve the passengers? - Wing profiles of aircrafts influence the fuel consumption. Is it possible to con tinuously adapt the shape of a wing during the flight under rapidly changing conditions? - Robots are designed to accomplish specific tasks as efficiently as possible. But what if a robot navigates in an unknown environment? - Energy demand changes quickly and is not easily predictable over time. Some types of power plants can only react slowly.

This proceedings book brings together the leading innovations and achievements by leading professionals. It acts as a forum for engineers, scientists, researchers, managers and students from academia and industry to present and discuss progress being made in research and application of computer-aided process engineering.

In the past decades, model reduction has become an ubiquitous tool in analysis and simulation of dynamical systems, control design, circuit simulation, structural dynamics, CFD, and many other disciplines dealing with complex physical models. The aim of this book is to survey some of the most successful model reduction methods in tutorial style articles and to present benchmark problems from several application areas for testing and comparing existing and new algorithms. As the discussed methods have often been developed in parallel in disconnected application areas, the intention of the mini-workshop in Oberwolfach and its proceedings is to make these ideas available to researchers and practitioners from all these different disciplines.

“…a timely contribution to a field of growing importance. This carefully edited book presents a rich collection of chapters ranging from mathematical methodology to emerging applications. I recommend it to students as a rigorous and comprehensive presentation of simulation-based optimization and to researchers as an overview of recent advances and challenges in the field.” — Jorge Nocedal, Professor, Northwestern University.Many engineering and scientific problems in design, control, and parameter estimation can be formulated as optimization problems that are governed by partial differential equations (PDEs). The complexities of the PDEs—and the requirement for rapid solution—pose significant difficulties. A particularly challenging class of PDE-constrained optimization problems is characterized by the need for real-time solution, i.e., in time scales that are sufficiently rapid to support simulation-based decision making. Real-Time PDE-Constrained Optimization, the first book devoted to real-time optimization for systems governed by PDEs, focuses on new formulations, methods, and algorithms needed to facilitate real-time, PDE-constrained optimization. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art algorithms and formulations, the text illustrates these algorithms with a diverse set of applications that includes problems in the areas of aerodynamics, biology, fluid dynamics, medicine, chemical processes, homeland security, and structural dynamics. Despite difficulties, there is a pressing need to capitalize on continuing advances in computing power to develop optimization methods that will replace simple rule-based decision making with optimized decisions based on complex PDE simulations. Audience The book is aimed at readers who have expertise in simulation and are interested in incorporating optimization into their simulations, who have expertise in numerical optimization and are interested in adapting optimization methods to the class of infinite-dimensional simulation problems, or who have worked in “offline” optimization contexts and are interested in moving to “online” optimization.Contents Preface; Part I: Concepts and Properties of Real-Time, Online Strategies. Chapter 1: Constrained Optimal Feedback Control of Systems Governed by Large Differential Algebraic Equations; Chapter 2: A Stabilizing Real-Time Implementation of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control; Chapter 3: Numerical Feedback Controller Design for PDE Systems Using Model Reduction: Techniques and Case Studies; Chapter 4: Least-Squares Finite Element Method for Optimization and Control Problems; Part II: Fast PDE-Constrained Optimization Solvers. Chapter 5: Space-Time Multigrid Methods for Solving Unsteady Optimal Control Problems; Chapter 6: A Time-Parallel Implicit Methodology for the Near-Real-Time Solution of Systems of Linear Oscillators; Chapter 7: Generalized SQP Methods with “Parareal” Time-Domain Decomposition for Time-Dependent PDE-Constrained Optimization; Chapter 8: Simultaneous Pseudo-Timestepping for State-Constrained Optimization Problems in Aerodynamics; Chapter 9: Digital Filter Stepsize Control in DASPK and Its Effect on Control Optimization Performance; Part III: Reduced Order Modeling. Chapter 10: Certified Rapid Solution of Partial Differential Equations for Real-Time Parameter Estimation and Optimization; Chapter 11: Model Reduction for Large-Scale Applications in Computational Fluid Dynamics; Chapter 12: Suboptimal Feedback Control of Flow Separation by POD Model Reduction; Part IV: Applications. Chapter 13: A Combined Shape-Newton and Topology Optimization Technique in Real-Time Image Segmentation; Chapter 14: COFIR: Coarse and Fine Image Registration; Chapter 15: Real-Time, Large Scale Optimization of Water Network Systems Using a Sub-domain Approach; Index.

This proceedings volume contains a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on Operations Research (SOR 2002).The contributions cover the broad interdisciplinary spectrum of Operations Research and present recent advances in theory, development of methods, and applications in practice. Subjects covered are Production, Logistics and Supply Chain Production, Marketing and Data Analysis, Transportation and Traffic, Scheduling and Project Management, Telecommunication and Information Technology, Energy and Environment, Public Economy, Health, Agriculture, Education, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Risk Management, Continuous Optimization, Discrete and Combinatorial Optimization, Stochastic and Dynamic Programming, Simulation, Control Theory, Systems Dynamics, Dynamic Games, Game Theory, Auctioning and Bidding, Experimental Economics, Econometrics, Statistics and Mathematical Economics, Fuzzy Logic, Multicriteria Decision Making, Decision Theory.

A book devoted to second-order optimality conditions in the calculus of variations and optimal control, suitable for researchers and engineers.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2017, held at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, from June 21-23, 2017. The conference brought together academic and industrial researchers in robotics from 30 countries, the majority of them affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, and their worldwide partners. RAAD 2017 covered all major areas of R&D and innovation in robotics, including the latest research trends. The book provides an overview on the advances in service and industrial robotics. The topics are presented in a sequence starting from the classical robotic subjects, such as kinematics, dynamics, structures, control, and ending with the newest topics, like human-robot interaction and biomedical applications. Researchers involved in the robotic field will find this an extraordinary and up-to-date perspective on the state of the art in this area.

This volume presents a collection of contributions dedicated to applied problems in the financial and energy sectors that have been formulated and solved in a stochastic optimization framework. The invited authors represent a group of scientists and practitioners, who cooperated in recent years to facilitate the growing penetration of stochastic programming techniques in real-world applications, inducing a significant advance over a large spectrum of complex decision problems. After the recent widespread liberalization of the energy sector in Europe and the unprecedented growth of energy prices in international commodity markets, we have witnessed a significant convergence of strategic decision problems in the energy and financial sectors. This has often resulted in common open issues and has induced a remarkable effort by the industrial and scientific communities to facilitate the adoption of advanced analytical and decision tools. The main concerns of the financial community over the last decade have suddenly penetrated the energy sector inducing a remarkable scientific and practical effort to address previously unforeseeable management problems. Stochastic Optimization Methods in Finance and Energy: New Financial Products and Energy Markets Strategies aims to include in a unified framework for the first time an extensive set of contributions related to real-world applied problems in finance and energy, leading to a common methodological approach and in many cases having similar underlying economic and financial implications. Part 1 of the book presents 6 chapters related to financial applications; Part 2 presents 7 chapters on energy applications; and Part 3 presents 5 chapters devoted to specific theoretical and computational issues.

Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Entropy