This book is a tutorial survey of the methodologies that are at the confluence of several fields: Computer Science, Mathematics and Operations Research. It fills the need for a good survey of heuristics optimizations methods and provides carefully structured and integrated treatment of the major technologies in optimization and search methodology. The chapter authors are drawn from across Computer Science and Operations Research and include some of the world's leading authorities in their field. The result is a major state-of-the-art tutorial text of the main optimization and search methodologies available to researchers, students and practitioners across discipline domains in applied science. It can be used as a textbook or a reference book to learn and apply these methodologies to a wide range of today's problems.

From the reviews:

"This edited book is ? designed to provide introductions to topics in search methodology. ? The chapters are well-written, accurate and carefully presented and provide a good exposition of each of the topics. ? Although aimed at PhD students, and I would certainly recommend the book to them and to supervisors, this volume should prove very useful to a wider audience ? . It provides an excellent introduction to a large set of techniques in search methodology and is a pleasure to read." (JM Wilson, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 58 (3), 2007)