Metaheuristics and worst-case guarantee algorithms: relations, provable properties and applications (ECCO XV)

This special issue of European Journal of Operational Research is devoted to the ECCO XV Conference, the fifteen annual meeting of the European Chapter on Combinatorial Optimization, held at the University of Lugano (Switzerland), from May 30 to June 1, 2002. ECCO, the EURO Working Group on Combinatorial Optimization, was created in 1987 by C. Roucairol, D. De Werra and A. Rinnooy Kan. It provides an excellent opportunity to discuss recent and important issues in combinatorial optimization and its applications. The group, which has about 500 members, is open to everybody interested in the field, either in theoretical aspects or in business, industry or public administration applications. During the first ten years, Catherine Roucairol (Université de Versailles, France) coordinated the ECCO activities. The current coordinator is Silvano Martello (University of Bologna, Italy). The ECCO meetings are held on a regular basis (once a year during Spring) and are devoted to all aspects of combinatorial optimization: operations management and logistics, production scheduling, location and distribution problems, resource allocation, flexible manufacturing, scheduling, VLSI design and computer design, network optimization, etc. Recently, special sessions in ECCO meetings put particular emphasis on new local search methods (tabu, genetic algorithms, simulated annealing), polyhedra approaches to difficult problems and recent developments in classical optimization problems (such as scheduling, assignment, knapsack, partitioning, etc). At ECCO meetings usually about 100 participants nicely combine scientific works and exchange of new ideas with an exciting atmosphere like Paris (May 1988), Venice (June 1989), Barcelona (May 1990), Dubrovnik (May 1991, canceled due to the unstable political situation in Croatia), Graz (April 1992), Bruxelles (April 1993), Milano (February 1994), Poznan (May 1995), Dublin (April 1996), Tenerife (May 1997), Copenhagen (May 1998), Bendor (May 1999), Capri (May 2000), Bonn (2001), Lugano (2002), Molde (2003), Beirut (2004). The Scientific Program Committee for ECCO XV was formed by Jacek BÃlażewicz (Technical University of Poznan, Poland), Van-Dat Cung (Univer-