Optimization

The 9th Belgian-French-German Conference on Optimization has been held in Namur (Belgium) on September 7-11, 1998. This volume is a collection of papers presented at this Conference. Originally, this Conference was a French-German Conference but this year, in accordance with the organizers'' wishes, a third country, Belgium, has joined the founding members of the Conference. Hence the name: Belgian­ French-German Conference on Optimization. Since the very beginning, the purpose of these Conferences has been to bring together researchers working in the area of Optimization and partic­ ularly to encourage young researchers to present their work. Most of the participants come from the organizing countries. However the general ten­ dancy is to invite outside researchers to attend the meeting. So this year, among the 101 participants at this Conference, twenty researchers came from other countries. The general theme of the Conference is everything that concerns the area of Optimization without specification of particular topics. So theoretical as­ pects of Optimization, in addition to applications and algorithms of Opti­ mization, will be developed. However, and this point was very important for the organizers, the Conference must retain its convivial character. No more than two parallel sessions are organized. This would allow useful contacts between researchers to be promoted. The editors express their sincere thanks to all those who took part in this Conference. Their invaluable discussions have made this volume possible.