AIRO 2006 - URBAN AND REGIONAL LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORTATION: NEW CHALLENGES FOR MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION

AIRO2006 will take place in Cesena from September 12 to 15, 2006, hosted by the University of Bologna and the Polo Scientifico-Didattico di Cesena, in the new buildings of the Faculty of Psychology. The conference theme is “Urban and Regional Logistics and Transportation: New Challenges for Modelling and Optimization”: it includes four plenary and semi-plenary lectures, a round table, and about 40 invited and contributed parallel sessions with more than 150 scientific presentations, covering almost all areas of Operations Research, from methodological aspects to applications. Special attention has been devoted to the activities of young researchers in our com-munity: two sessions will include the presentations of the dissertations of several Italian Ph.D.’s and one a selection of case studies of the Master on “Data Intelli- gence e Strategie Decisionali”. Memorial sessions for Tito Ciriani, Mario Lucertini and Stefano Pallottino have also been organized. The success of AIRO2006 conference is due to the contributions of several indi-viduals, companies and institutions that cooperated and supported the conference organization. We first of all want to thank Egon Balas, Nicos Christofides, Pierre Hansen and Giovanni Rinaldi who have accepted to give pleanry or semi-plenary talks at the conference, and to Massimo Merlino who has organized a round table on logistic outsourcing. Our gratitude is also due to the Scientific Committee members and to Alessandro Agnetis, Alberto Caprara, Raffaele Cerulli, Ciro D’Apice, Paolo Dell’Olmo, Gianni Di Pillo, Giovanni Felici, Paola Festa, Vito Fragnelli, Monica Gentili, Roberto Musmanno, Guido Perboli, Nicoletta Ricciardi, Giovanni Righini, Fabrizio Rossi, Marcello Sanguineti and Chefi Triki who have organized several invited sessions. A special thank is required for the kind hospitality provided to AIRO2006 by the Faculty of Psychology, and in particular by the Dean, Bruna Zani, and all the administrative and technical staff. We must also acknowledge the invaluable work and organizational support of Ser.In.Ar. Forlì-Cesena that has the responsibility of the conference secretariat, and in particular of the President Piero Gallina, Fabrizio Abbondanza, Alessandra Riva, Livia Garzanti, Romina Foschi, and all other personnel, for their highly professional assistance. AIRO2006 conference organization would have not been possible without the generous financial support of the conference sponsors: University of Bologna and Polo Scientifico-Didattico di Cesena, Regione Emilia-Romagna, Confederazione Nazionale dell’Artigianato e della Piccola e Media Impresa, DIGICONS, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Cesena, HERA, ILOG, NEMSYS, RATIO Sistemi and SCS Azioneinnova Consulting