THE AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR OPERATION RESEARCH INCORPORATED
ABN: 99 137 210 862



Home
--- About the Bulletin ---
ASOR Bulletin
Instructions to Authors
List of Topics
---------2016--------
Issue 1, 2016
---------2014--------
Issue 1, 2014
---------2013--------
Sep 2013 Issue
---------2012--------
Jun 2012 Issue
Mar 2012 Issue
---------2011--------
Dec 2011 Issue
Jun 2011 Issue
Mar 2011 Issue
---------2010--------
Dec 2010 Issue
Sep 2010 Issue
Jun 2010 Issue
March 2010 Issue
---------2009--------
December 2009 Issue
September 2009 Issue
June 2009 Issue
March 2009 Issue
---------2008--------
December 2008 Issue
September 2008 Issue
June 2008 Issue
Mar 2008 Issue
---------2007--------
December 2007 Issue


March 2007 Issue
---------2006--------


March to December 2006 Issues
---------2005--------
June to December 2005 Issues


March 2005 Issue
---------2004--------
December 2004 Issue
September 2004 Issue
June 2004 Issue


March 2004 Issue
---------2003--------
December 2003 Issue
September 2003 Issue
June 2003 Issue


March 2003 Issue







Electronic ASOR Bulletin
Volume 22           Number 3               September 2003
Published by: The Australian Society for Operations Research Inc.

ISSN 1446-6678


Contents


Editorial

In this issue, two technical papers have been published: the first on A Markov-based Method for Military Analysis by A. H. Pincombe and B. M. Pincombe and the second on A Modified Osman’s Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem by C. Sigauke and H. M. Talukder. In this issue, we have also published a brief report on ASOR annual general meeting 2003 and ASOR’s statement of income and expenditure for the years 2000 and 2001 along with the independent auditor’s report.

I am pleased to inform you that the electronic version of ASOR Bulletin is now available at this web site. Although the electronic version is prepared as an HTML file, for technical reasons articles may be in PDF or PS format.

Address for sending contributions to the ASOR Bulletin:

Ruhul A Sarker
Editor, ASOR Bulletin
School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
The University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy
Northcott Drive, Canberra 2600
Email: ruhul@cs.adfa.edu.au

  or

Emma Hunt
Associate Editor, ASOR Bulletin
DSTO, PO Box 1500
Edinburgh 5111
Email: Emma.Hunt@dsto.defence.gov.au


 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 
A Markov-based Method for Military Analysis

A. H. Pincombe*  and B. M. Pincombe**

  *Land Operations Division, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, PO Box 1500, Edinburgh SA 5111, Australia.
  **Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, PO Box 1500, Edinburgh SA 5111, Australia.

Abstract

In the operations analysis of military engagements, an important task is the establishment of connections between low-level (detailed) variables and high-level outcomes, to estimate the values of various capabilities in defined scenarios. We define a family of Markov decision processes to provide bounds for these values, using standard military analysis methodology to simplify the problem and to reduce the number of Markov states that are required. The parameters that define the Markov transition matrix can be represented as analytical functions of lower-order variables, while the time dependence of the state probabilities can be obtained, from the Markov analysis, as a set of functions. Cases can be compared via costs, which represent losses and are thus indicative of the force size required for victory.



A Modified Osman’s Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem

Caston Sigaukea* and  Habib M. Talukderb**

*Department of Applied Mathematics, **Department of Applied  Physics, National University of Science and Technology P.O. Box AC 939 Ascot Bulawayo  Zimbabwe

  Abstract

 The basic vehicle routing problem is concerned with  finding a set of routes for a fleet of vehicles which have to service a specified number of retail outlets from a central depot. A vehicle is allowed a maximum of two trips a day. In our analysis a vehicle delivers and collects empty containers. For the empty containers to be collected in a specified route total volume should not exceed the vehicle capacity. Similarly, the total quantity demanded on that route should not exceed the vehicle capacity. Our objective is to design a set of least cost vehicle routes for a given set of customer requirements.               

 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Local News


Annual General Meeting
AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH INC
10th July 2003
 
Chairman’s Report:

•    Simon reported that general feedback implied that the decision to hold the National Conference within ICIAM was a good one and there had been a benefit in the interchange of ideas and opportunity to attend talks in related disciplines.  As an occasional activity this was excellent but to avoid loss of identity we should not do this on a regular basis.

•    He reminded members that the next APORS conference will be held in New Delhi on Dec 8-11 2003.  Members were encouraged to check details on the web at www.apors2003.com and encouraged to attend.

•    The next meeting of IFORS will be in Hawai on July 11-15 2005.   There will be a call for the ASOR representative paper next year.

Financial Report:

•    The audited accounts for 2001 as attached were accepted on the motion of Patrick Tobin seconded Kaye Marion.

•    Kaye reported that society is currently operating at a small annual surplus and is recovering from the deficit state of a few years ago.  Consequently at present there is no need to change annual capitation.  It should be noted that there were no meeting expenses in 2001 and an ASOR paper for the IFORS conference was not selected.  The accounts for 2002 show a similar result as for 2001 but had not been audited at the time of the meeting due to a delay in receiving a request for the IFORS capitation.

•    Moved Kaye Marion Seconded Patrick Tobin That K Adams be appointed as the Auditor for ASOR National Accounts                            Passed

Publications report:

•    Emma tabled a document prepared by Ruhul Sarker summarizing the number of copies distributed to each chapter and the associated cost.  The problem that Ruhul had with the printing of Dec 2002 bulletin when a modified cover was necessary and the need to use a commercial printer for the March 2003 (at a much higher cost) appears to now be resolved and he anticipates being able to print internally at a very competitive rate.  The restructuring of departments within ADFA now appears to have stabilized and he believes that internal administrative support is once more in place.

•    The problem of maintaining an accurate data-base remains and all chapters are requested to provide current mailing addresses to Ruhul.

•    Members are encouraged to provide papers for the refereed section and topical information for the general section of the Bulletin.

•    The concept of changing to electronic publication was discussed and general support for such a move was expressed.  Some members present indicated that they would prefer a paper copy.

Other business:

•    There was a request that presentations from the conference be collected and made available on the web.  Simon undertook to explore options and seek to make information available.  All papers from the defence stream would be on the web but on a secure site, so some arrangement for transfer would have to be made.

•    The next national conference will be in 2005 and subject to confirmation will be held in Perth.

•    It was suggested that the Society should examine its age profile and develop a strategy to try and offset the perceived aging profile.

Meeting closed at 6:15pm


ASOR Audit Report




The Chinese Higher Education Strategic Initiative Grant

The Chinese Higher Education Strategic Initiative (CHESI) was recently announced by the Australian Government. The funding will enable Australian Universities to take part in a new Australian Government research program between Australia and China.
Eight Australian Universities were selected by application to take part in the program and they were awarded $585,000.
Among recipients were the University of Ballarat and Curtin University. CIAO (Centre for Applied Optimisation, University of Ballarat) and WACEIO (Western Australian Centre of Excellence in Industrial Optimisation, Curtin University) received $161,000 for their joint project "Complex Industrial Optimization - Mathematical Modelling". The project involves cooperation with 8 leading Chinese institutions in the area of optimisation (Beijing University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai University, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), Fudan University, Chongqing Normal University and Hebei University). Some researchers and PhD students from Australia will visit China and 16 researchers and PhD students from China will visit Australia through one of the schemes: China-Ballarat-Perth-China or China-Perth-Ballarat-China. Some of these visits will be undertaken in December 2004, during the next ICOTA conference, which will be held in Ballarat. An Australian-Chinese optimization workshop will also be held in 2004.

- Alex Rubinov


The ANZIAM Mathematics-in-Industry Study Groups are going to New Zealand

By arrangement with ANZIAM (Australia New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which is a Division of the Australian Mathematical Society but embraces both countries), the ANZIAM Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group (MISG), which has operated in Australia since 1984, is shifting to New Zealand for 2004 and 2005. The goals of MISG are to reach out to industry (interpreted very broadly to include biological, medical and financial applications, as well as the traditional engineering-based ones) to show them the power of mathematics when it is applied to their particular problems.  Through the holding of MISG meetings, academic mathematicians find out about real applications, and many postgraduate projects in Industrial Mathematics arise through MISG involvement.  Following the formation of the Centre for Mathematics in Industry (CMI) within the Institute of Information and Mathematical Science (IIMS) at Massey University's Albany campus, it has been recommended that the MISG's in 2004 and 2005 be organised from there, using a network of collaborating institutions throughout the country. Principal arrangements are now being made by Professor Robert McKibbin (Head of IIMS) and Professor Graeme Wake (Adjunct Professor of Industrial Mathematics within CMI).  Graeme Wake has been nominated as Director of MISG and is now devoting half his time to this initiative.  It is intended that the Centre will continue this kind of industry-linkage after the MISG (ANZIAM) returns to Australia in 2006.

MISG 2004 will be held at the University of Auckland (City campus), 26 – 30 January 2004

Further information from Graeme Wake  g.c.wake@massey.ac.nz
 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Forthcoming Conferences

 
Conferences in Australasia

38th Annual ORSNZ Conference
http://www.orsnz.org.nz
21st – 22nd November 2003

The 38th Annual ORSNZ Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd November 2003 at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. 

The organising committee welcomes papers from researchers and research students on all aspects of Operations Research.  In addition to papers of general interest, submissions that have a practical focus are particularly encouraged.

The submission deadline for abstracts is 30 September 2003.  Full, accepted papers are due by 31 October 2003. 

For further information and submission details visit: www.orsnz.org.nz or email conference@orsnz.org.nz


CEC 2003:  Congress on Evolutionary Computation, Canberra, Australia, December 8-12, 2003
http://www.cs.adfa.edu.au/cec_2003/
The Congress on Evolutionary Computation, co-sponsored by the IEEE Neural Networks Society, the Evolutionary Programming Society, the IEAUst, and the IEE, is the leading international conference in the field.  The 2003 Congress will be held in Canberra, Australia.
It covers all topics in evolutionary computation: from combinatorial to numerical optimization, from supervised to unsupervised learning, from co-evolution to collective behaviours, from evolutionary design to evolvable hardware, from molecular to quantum computing, from ant colony to artificial ecology, etc.

The emphasis of the Congress will be on original theories and novel applications of evolutionary computation techniques. The Congress welcomes paper submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide.

The Congress will feature keynote speeches and tutorials by world-leading researchers. It also will include a number of special sessions and workshops on the latest hot topics.

For further details please visit the conference website.


6th Australian Conference on Knowledge Management and Intelligent Decision Support , Monash University, Melbourne, December 11-12, 2003.

This year the conference theme is: "Managing Knowledge with Technology"

Important dates:
Paper Submission (5000 words maximum): 22 August 2003
Notification of Acceptance: 22 September 2003
Submission of camera ready paper: 13 October  2003

The conference intends to explore the role of ICT in knowledge management and in particular open the discussion on if and/or how innovative application of ICT can contribute to implementing knowledge management strategies.

Authors are invited to submit research papers as well as application examples representing original, previously unpublished work.

Review Procedures:  All submitted papers will be blind peer reviewed by at least two members of the International Program Committee. The review criteria are based on originality, rigor, and relevance of content. No paper, which has been previously accepted, published, or presented at another meeting, or submitted for review else where may be submitted. Accepted papers will appear as a monograph with an ISBN number and published by Australian Scholars Publishing.

Full details including submission formats available at: http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/km/ACKMIDS2003/


ICOTA 2004:  Sixth International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications , Ballarat, Victoria, December 9 - 11, 2004.
http://www.ballarat.edu.au/ard/itms/CIAO/ORBNewsletter/ICOTA/index.shtml


The Fifth Asia-Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference & The Seventh Asia-Pacific Division Meeting of the International Foundation of Production Research , ANA Hotel, Gold Coast, Australia, December 12-15, 2004
http://www.maths.qut.edu.au/apiems2004/



Forthcoming International Conferences


OR2003: Operations Research 2003, Heidelberg, Germany, September 2-5, 2003.
http://or2003.awi.uni-heidelberg.de/

ESA2003: 11th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms , Budapest, Hungary, September 15-20, 2003.
http://www.conferences.hu/ALGO2003/call_for_papers.htm

EUROGEN 2003:  Evolutionary Methods for Design, Optimisation and Control with Applications to Industrial and Societal Problems , Barcelona, Spain, September 15-17,2003. http://congress.cimne.upc.es/eurogen03
6th International Conference on Operations Research, Havana, Cuba, September 15-19, 2003.
http://www.uned.es/operations-research/

ORP3: Operational Research Peripatetic Postgraduate Programme – A EURO conference for young OR researchers , Lambrecht, Germany, September 21-26, 2003.
http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/~orp3/

OPTIMA 2003:  Fifth Chilean Operations Research Conference , Valparaiso, Chile, September 24-26, 2003.
http://www.ind.utfsm.cl/optima2003/

Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization , GuiLin, China, October 7-10, 2003.
http://lsec.cc.ac.cn/~yyx/nlao2003.html

MI03:  SIAM Conference on Mathematics for Industry , Toronto, Canada, October 13-15, 2003.
http://www.siam.org/meetings/mi03/

INOC2003: International Network Optimization Conference , Evry / Paris, France, October 27-29, 2003.
http://www-citi.int-evry.fr/~petro/INOC2003

COCOS 2003: Second International Workshop on Global Constrained Optimization and Constraint Satisfaction , Switzerland, November 18-21, 2003.
http://liawww.epfl.ch/cocos03/

APORS2003:  Sixth International Conference of Asia Pacific Operations Research Societies (APORS) within IFORS , New Delhi, India, December 8-10, 2003.
http://www.apors2003.com

FSTTCS ’03:  23rd Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science , Bombay, India, December 15-17, 2003
http://www.fsttcs.org/

HICSS-37: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , Hawaii, January 5-8, 2004.
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/

International Conference on Multiscale Optimization Methods and Applications , Gainesville, Florida, USA,  February 26 - 28,2004. 
http://www.math.ufl.edu/special03/workshop2.html

I NFORMS:  Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference : Florida, USA, March 7-10, 2004.
http://www.informs.org/Conf/Telecom04/

1st International Andean Conference on Operations Research , Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, March 15-19, 2004.
http://www.decisionware-ltd.com/socio/ccio2004_english.htm

The 33rd International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering , Jeju, Korea, March 25-27, 2004
http://cie2004.cheju.ac.kr

EUCCO 2004: European Conference on Computational Optimization , Dresden, Germany, March 29-31, 2004.
http://www.math.tu-dresden.de/~hinze/eucco2004.html

OIPE2004: 8th International Workshop on Optimization and Inverse Problems in Electrical Engineering , Grenoble, France, September 6-8, 2004.
http://www.leg.ensieg.inpg.fr/OIPE2004

MUDSM 2004: 15th Mini-EURO Conference, Managing Uncertainty in Decision Support Models , Coimbra, Portugal, September 22-24, 2004.
http://www.inescc.pt/mudsm2004/committees.html

10th International Conference on Stochastic Programming , Tucson, Arizona, USA, October 9-15, 2004.
http://stoprog.org/index.html/conferences.html
Maintained by: Ruhul Sarker, ITEE, UNSW@ADFA, Northcott Drive, Canberra 2600, Australia, Email: ruhul@cs.adfa.edu.au
Copyright © 1972 - 2008 THE AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR OPERATION RESEARCH INCORPORATED
All Rights Reserved. Contact: Webmaster