Drei große Reformenpakete und eine Reihe kleinerer Begleitmaßnahmen prägen das renten¬politische Erbe der rot-grünen Bundesregierung. Einerseits greifen sie Trends in der Reformpolitik seit Beginn der 90er Jahre auf. So verstärkt die Rentenstrukturreform 2001 beispielsweise die...

This study aims to improve the accuracy of groundwater pollution source identification using concentration measurements from a heuristically designed optimal monitoring network. The designed network is constrained by the maximum number of permissible monitoring locations. The designed monitoring...

In this paper, we introduce four new benchmark problems, which are based on rather common optimization issues of water resources management. These problems have the following features: a) adjustable difficulty, to cover a wide range of common engineering problems b) physical background familiar...

A model for the design of detention basin systems is presented that interfaces a simulated annealing (SA) optimization procedure with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Hydrologic Engineering Center - Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS). The optimization model is based upon the simulated...

An optimization procedure has been developed for branching storm and sanitary sewer systems with a pre-determined layout for determining the minimum total cost. The model was developed within Microsoft Excel using simulated annealing as the optimization procedure. The total cost of the storm...

In recent years, adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have become a standard tool for Bayesian parameter estimation. In adaptive MCMC, the past iterations are used to tune the proposal distribution of the algorithm. The same adaptation mechanisms can be used in Simulated Annealing...

The partitioning of random graphs is investigated numerically using “simulated annealing” and “extremal optimization”. While generally in an NP-hard problem, it is shown that the optimization of the graph partitions is particularly difficult for sparse graphs with average connectivities...

Because of the increasing number of distributed energy sources integrated with the distribution network various optimization methods are very useful in determining the optimal placement, type and size of the distributed generators. One of the most commonly used algorithms are so called...

Simulated Annealing has become a standard optimization technique for a wide variety of problems: starting at a random configuration and performing a sequence of moves, the system is optimized using a control parameter which partially allows for accepting a deterioration and therefore for...

For many years, the problem of how to distribute students to the various universities in Germany according to the preferences of the students has remained unsolved. Various approaches, like the centralized method to let a central agency organize the distribution to the various universities or...