This interdisciplinary reference and guide provides an introduction to modeling methodologies and models which form the starting point for deriving efficient and effective solution techniques, and presents a series of case studies that demonstrate how heuristic and analytical approaches may be used to solve large and complex problems. Topics and features: introduces the key modeling methods and tools, including heuristic and mathematical programming-based models, and queueing theory and simulation techniques; demonstrates the use of heuristic methods to not only solve complex decision-making problems, but also to derive a simpler solution technique; presents case studies on a broad range of applications that make use of techniques from genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic, tabu search, and queueing theory; reviews examples incorporating system dynamics modeling, cellular automata and agent-based simulations, and the use of big data; supplies expanded descriptions and examples in the appendices.
