Search in Constraint Programming (09w5125)

Organizers

Gilles Pesant (École Polytechnique de Montréal)

Meinolf Sellmann (Brown University)

Description

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Search in Constraint Programming" workshop next week, November 29 - December 4, 2009.

As the modern economic era of growth based on over-consumption draws
near to its end, we need to find new ways to maintain the standard of
living while operating within the limited capacities of renewable
resources, under the pressure of global competition, and in an aging
society. Computers can help increase efficiency by providing
intelligent decision support on a broad scale.
Producers and service providers are especially in need of advice on
how to streamline their operations by saving scarce natural or human
resources. Computers can intelligently support decisions on how to
optimize objectives while observing problem-specific constraints. In
this way, computational decision support can help save precious raw
materials or reduce pollution. While decision support is employed
very successfully in some core application areas, the technology does not live up to its vast potential today. Ease of use is a vital requirement for a broader
exploitation of computational optimization power. To the present day,
human experts are still necessary to model and solve real-world
problems efficiently.

This workshop aims to make decision support more easily accessible by automating solvers so that expert intervention is not required anymore
to allow for an efficient solution process.


The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologí­a (CONACYT).