Many real-world decision-making situations arise from agriculture and from forest management. Models and decision support systems to be used in agriculture or forestry are often presented at OR international conferences and workshops. Even though most presentations contain a section called “Validation” or “Discussion” those issues are often treated rather superficially. In other words, many presentations describe carefully what the program or model does, but they only briefly stress why and how it does it. The purpose of this volume is to focus on the methods in the context of the problems they are intended to solve.

This Special Volume of Annals of Operations Research is intended to collect in one volume high quality papers on all aspects of operations research in agriculture and forest management, considering both theoretical issues and application results. Methods covered may include, but are not restricted to, the following themes:

  • Dynamic programming
  • Bayesian networks and decision graphs
  • Markov decision processes
  • Linear programming
  • Stochastic programming
  • Parameter estimation and knowledge acquisition
  • Learning from data
  • Descriptive and normative decision tree techniques
  • Agent modelling and simulation
  • State of the art surveys

Papers will undergo a very stringent evaluation process based on an international refereeing procedure in order to ensure contributions are of top international standard.

Deadline for submissions: November 30th 2007

Date of completion: January 31st 2009

We encourage authors to send their contribution in electronic form to one of the guest editors. PDF format is preferred. If submitting hard copies please send four copies. For preparation of manuscripts please follow the instructions at http://www.springer.com/journal/10479/submission

Guest-Editors:

Frederick Garcia
Unite de Biometrie et Intelligence Artificielle
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), BP52627
31326 Castanet-Tolosan
France
e-mail: fgarcia[at]toulouse[dot]inra[dot]fr

Lluis M. Pla
Dep. of Mathematics
University of Lleida
73, Jaume II
25001 Lleida
Spain
e-mail: LMpla[at]matematica[dot]udl[dot]es

Bela Vizvari
Dept. of Operations Research
Eotvos University
Pazmany Peter s. 1/C
H-1117 Budapes
Hungary
e-mail: vizvari[at]math[dot]elte[dot]hu

Filed under Call for papers