Category Archives: Special Interest Groups

Working and special interest groups on agriculture, management, environment, and or the application of Operational Research to the three

Special Interest Groups

EURO Working Group – OR in Agriculture and Forest Management

As declared by the EURO Council, the main purpose of the EWG’s is to encourage communication and research between small groups of members specialising in particular topics. The WG is open to people with different backgrounds (like industry, university, etc) and who are interested on OR methods and its application in Agriculture and Forest Management in order to exchange ideas, experiences and research results. In this context, we invite everyone interested in this topic to join us.

 

The group started in 2003 with approximately 40 members from different countries. The number has been increased since then and now we are more than 275. People belongs mainly to EU contries but we have also a significant representation from America and Asia. The full list of members is shown at the webpage of the group (

 

The fifth meeting of the WG was held in Bonn within EURO XXIII, july 2009. Furthermore we have also organised the EURO Summer Institute 2009 held in Lleida (Spain).

 

The sixth meeting of the WG was integrated within EURO XXIV in Lisbon, july 2010. We fail to celebrate a meeting in 2011, 2012 and 2013 but we succeded to organise a stream in the past EURO Conferences with very interesting contributions.

 

* The eighth meeting will be held in Glasgow (UK), 12-15 July 2014 during the 27th EURO Conference. Different sessions are proposed within the stream we are organising, see

 

 

Special Interest Groups

Method: extinction of social groups (such as agricultural OR)

Interesting article on social group dynamics using a non-linear dynamics model. The interesting thing is can the para,meters be managed to prevent small groups fading away.  Is there a critical mass?

Nonlinear dynamics is invoked to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.

One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.

At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the “utility” of speaking one instead of another.

“The idea is pretty simple,” said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

“It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility,” he told BBC News.

via BBC News – Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says.