Friday, April 19, 2019

[DMANET] Call-for-Papers: OPTE Special Issue on Technical Operations Research

Optimization and Engineering Journal
Special Issue on Technical Operations Research

Guest Editors: Armin Fügenschuh, Ulf Lorenz, Peter F. Pelz

Aim and scope
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Technical Operations Research is a bridging discipline that combines elements from engineering (e.g., mechanical, electrical, civil, material), computer science, mathematics and business economics. The aim is to foster quantitative methods in the engineering sciences. A role model is the classic Operations Research which has successfully brought discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization and other formal disciplines to business engineering and management science. Analogously, Technical Operations Research (TOR) focuses now on technical systems and the control and management of their processes. One example is the combination of individual modules into a larger technical systems in the best possible way, when technical constraints as well as economic considerations have to be taken into account. In this way, TOR is meant to bring OR to new areas of applications, which implies the development of new models and algorithmic methods to solve them to optimality. As a side effect, it stimulates the communication between the different areas of expertise, in particular, between engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists and economists.


Major topics of interests
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An ideal submission shows a mixture of the three core TOR disciplines:
- Problems, models and algorithms: Engineering problems that lead to new TOR research questions, formulated as mathematical optimization problems (e.g., (non-) linear, mixed-integer, ODE/PDE-constrained, robust, stochastic, bilevel, etc.), given rise to the development of new or modified algorithmic approaches for a successful and scalable solution.
- Validation and verification: Typically, TOR algorithms use a coarse approximation of physical and technical constraints. Hence their solutions need to be validated and verified by, e.g., simulation models that carry a more refined description of the physics, or by real-world demonstrators and prototypes. This in return shows model-weaknesses and -limits, and can be used to improve formulations and refine models.
- Tools for engineers: A major idea of TOR is that the method-oriented disciplines do not replace engineers but extend their capabilities. The goal is to build tools such that the engineers can describe and model a problem at hand, and solve them supported by algorithms. This necessitates the development of tailored modeling languages for describing problem instances as well as interfaces to navigate and explore the solution space in a user-friendly manner.


Important Dates
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Papers should be submitted online at https://www.opte-journal.com. Upon manuscript submission, please select the special issue "TOR 2019". Submissions will be peer-reviewed according to the standards of the journal.

- September 30, 2019: Deadline for submissions of full length papers
- February 28, 2020: Notification of initial reviews
- April 30, 2020: Deadline for revisions
- July 31, 2020: Notification of final reviews
- September 30, 2020: Submission of final camera-ready manuscripts
- November 30, 2020: Expected publication


Guest Editors
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- Armin Fügenschuh, Professor for Engineering Mathematics and Numerics of Optimization, Institute for Mathematics, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, fuegenschuh@b-tu.de
- Ulf Lorenz, Professor for Technology Management, School of Economic Disciplines, University of Siegen, ulf.lorenz@uni-siegen.de
- Peter F. Pelz, Professor for Fluid Systems, Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Darmstadt, peter.pelz@fst.tu-darmstadt.de

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