February 1999 Worldwide OR Involvement By Andres Weintraub IFORS, the International Federation of Operations Research Societies, incorporates 45 countries and includes about 30,000 members. The main objectives of IFORS are to promote the use of OR worldwide and provide links among the different member societies. To do this, we have developed a series of activities supported by a secretariat that recently moved from Helle Welling in Denmark to Loretta Peregrina in Canada. The treasurer is Hugh Bradley from the United States. Following are some of IFORS' main activities: Meetings IFORS carries out its major encounter, the triennial meeting, in host countries that rotate from continent to continent. The four most recent meetings have been in Buenos Aires, Athens, Lisbon and Vancouver. Our next meeting will be held in Beijing in August 1999. IFORS also promotes smaller, specialized meetings, which gather academics and practitioners in specific fields. Some of the themes of recent specialized meetings have included Transportation carried out in Sweden, Multimedia hosted in the United States, and Energy in the United Kingdom. IFORS also coordinates meetings with other academic organizations, through sponsorships and support. Celso Carneiro of Brasil, IFORS vice president representing Latin America, oversees these events. One of our latest efforts has been to introduce a more international flavor to national and regional meetings, including those of INFORMS. For the Montreal INFORMS meeting, we organized, in conjunction with the INFORMS specialized groups, a couple of sessions with invited papers from outside North America. For the EURO meeting in July 1999 in Brussels, we also co-organized a few sessions as well as two panels, one on the globalization of OR and the second on how OR can deal with major problems worldwide. These panels reflected the wide interest that IFORS can cover through different cultures and societies. It was interesting to see through these panels the similarities in outlook over many issues, reflecting the growing globalization process we are experiencing, as well as the fact that OR is OR in any place in many senses. At the same time it should be observed, in particular when talking about applications of OR, that there are important differences reflecting national cultures, economic development and other local characteristics. A similar panel has been organized for the Latin American meeting in OR to be held in Buenos Aires in August 1999. For the next INFORMS Meeting in Cincinnati we have added the IFORS Distinguished Lecture, an invited session which will be carried out by Bill Pierskalla on the topic of health services within the OR framework. Publications IFORS publishes two journals. The long-standing International Abstracts of Operations Research (IAOR), which contains abstracts of papers from all relevant journals in OR, is edited by David Smith from England. After many years of print publications, IFORS is now producing a CD version which will allow, through a search engine, easy navigation through the OR literature. The second journal, International Transactions in Operations Research (ITOR), seeks to reflect work carried out in OR through different perspectives in the different continents. Peter Bell from Canada edits it. Two years ago, IFORS contributed to a special issue of OR/MS Today devoted to detailing OR applications in different parts of the world. The issue, which received an editorial award, has motivated IFORS, INFORMS and Lionheart Publishing to produce such an issue on a yearly basis. The next issue is scheduled for April 1999. Electronic Communications IFORS established its Web page years ago and continues to strengthen it since IFORS can play a role in connecting information from different countries, continents and sources. We plan to have information, catalogued for easy access on jobs, conferences and other areas of interest, on a worldwide basis. We also plan to have easy access from the IFORS Web page to all other national and regional Web sites. In this form a user will have a friendly way to access information of the OR universe, be it by topic or country. We are also starting an electronic magazine, which we hope will play a role in connecting OR people around the world, and generating thought processes and discussions through articles, opinions and news. Developing Countries One very important role for IFORS is promoting OR activities in developing countries (DC), where often OR Societies are small and at times function only informally. In addition, resources may be scarce. A DC Committee headed by Elise del Rosario (Philippines) develops specific activities which include a DC newsletter, the organization of special OR meetings oriented to OR applications typical in DC countries, and a prize given at each IFORS triennial meeting for the best OR work in a developing country. The two latest winners of this prize were entries from India and China. One project we are currently developing, for which we hope to have the collaboration of INFORMS, is in the transfer of educational material to DCs. This project will be carried out by Dominique de Werra from Switzerland (IFORS vice president representing EURO) and Susana Mondschein from Chile. This educational material will consist of software available to support OR education or packaged algorithms, printed material, CDs and videos. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 1999 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. 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