30 September - 2 October 2010, Aarhus, Denmark

Centre for Operations Research Applications in Logistics (CORAL) hosted the 4th Nordic Optimization Symposium in Aarhus in the beginning of October 2010.

"Those wonderful days in Aarhus" is one of the many spontaneous comments from the conference. PhD student Tue Christensen expresses his views like this:

- Another Nordic Optimization Symposium is over and what a symposium! I had a great time socialising with my Nordic colleagues and heard a lot of interesting talks. I personally got very useful comments - a quality not many conferences have. Along with the nice location and good food, everything came together and made the NOS4 a very successful event! says Tue Christensen.

Plenary talk by Richard Eglese on Vehicle Routing

The conference started with a plenary talk by Professor Richard Eglese from Lancaster University. His talk was entitled "What is the best path?" and referred to the issues that arise in practical problem solving on large road networks, and techniques involved in dealing with these issues. The talk made it clear that there are considerable challenges in the process of providing valid data on travel distances, travel times, and travel costs, which are needed as input to vehicle routing and scheduling models.

Finding the best path
The 54 researchers gathered at the conference discussed a large variety of issues relating to optimization and operations research. Optimization is all about finding the best way through a maze of challenges and finding optimal solutions to complex decision-making problems. The conference pointed out the large variety of challenges to be dealt with today - from the question of improving the school income system in very remote areas through to designing the best attack plans in areas of war.

- The presentations covered a range of issues in a wide spectrum of problem domains and contributed to making the symposium a rewarding meeting to everyone, says conference host, Professor Jens Lysgaard.

Optimizing schools in fringe areas
Two talks in particular made an impression on PhD student Tue Christensen. The first was about calculating the additional cost of operating schools in very remote areas of Norway (by Truls Flatberg).

- It was a talk with many flavors as politics, OR and the pressure of 'real world' deadlines and obvious parallels to a current hot topic in Denmark about 'Udkantsdanmark' ('Fringe Denmark'), adds Tue Christensen.

Optimizing attack plansAll the talks were of high quality, and the second talk that made a particular impression on PhD student Tue Christensen was about Tactical Mission Planning, which essentially was how to blow things up with success (by Nils-Hassan Quttineh). The goal is to find the most effective way of attacking a convoy of ships by specifying which ships should be attacked and from which angles. - This belligerent application can be seen as a descendent of the entire field of operational research and its early start during the Second World War, explains Tue Christensen.

The 4th Nordic Optimization Symposium was held at Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel in Aarhus from 30th September to 2nd October 2010. It was the second time that the Nordic Optimization Symposium visited Denmark. The symposium was held:

• in Copenhagen in 2006

• in Oslo in 2007

• in Stockholm in 2009

The symposium was organized on behalf of Centre for Operations Research Applications in Logistics (CORAL) and the Nordic section of the Mathematical Optimization Society. The organizers were Professor Jens Lysgaard, Associate Professor Sanne Wøhlk, Assistant Professor Sin C. Ho, and Research Secretary Susanne Lannie.

The 5th Nordic Optimization Symposium 2012

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim will be hosting the 5th Nordic Optimization Symposium on 7-9 June 2012.

CONTACT
Asgeir Tomasgard, asgeir.tomasgard@iot.ntnu.no