April 2000 INFORMS Online International Resources in OR By Michael A. Trick A few issues ago (October, 1999), I wrote how the Internet and the web have made it easy for INFORMS to offer information and services to people and organizations around the world. This globalizing force works the other way, of course; INFORMS members and others interested in operations research can now gain access to the information and services of those in other countries. In fact, this internationalization of offerings may be stronger for OR groups smaller than INFORMS; for a small organization, the membership of INFORMS may represent a huge multiple of their natural audience. Some of the largest and most active services are those provided by national and international OR organizations. IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies) at www.ifors.org is an organization of OR societies, including INFORMS. IFORS has recently revamped its pages, and has begun a number of new initiatives, including an educational resources initiative headed by Vicki Sauter (an associate editor at INFORMS Online). This initiative will collect all manner of educational material available on the web and provide an index that can be searched in any number of ways. While the pages at IFORS itself are not yet extensive, the listing of member organizations (44 member countries and five kindred societies) makes it clear how broad interest is in OR. A society with an extensive set of pages is the (British) Operational Research Society (www.orsoc.org.uk/). I have written about these pages before. While I differ with the ORS in my views on how much material should be made available to the general public versus how much should be limited to members, the Society has made a fair amount of information available in their "About OR" section. This includes an extensive section on careers in OR, selected articles from their OR Newsletter, pointers to videos and other learning aids, and so on. The ORS also has an extensive selection of training courses and short courses. Perhaps better than most societies, the ORS has worked hard to make "new" information technologies, like data mining and data warehousing, part of their organization. Some other international and national societies deserving mention include: EURO (www.ulb.ac.be/euro/euro_welcome.html), an organization of European operational research groups, which has an extensive calendar and listing of European courses. The Canadian Operational Research Society (www.cors.ca), including past issues of their bulletin, conference information and career information. The Operational Research Society of Italy (www.airo.org/), with their bulletin, conference information and journal contents. The Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society (www.korms.or.kr), home of this year's INFORMS-KORMS Seoul 2000 meeting, which, in addition to extensive conference information, includes other information on the society. This is just a small selection of society pages available. The IFORS site has a much longer list. There are many other "international" pages that are not directly supported by professional organizations. In Great Britain, there is a divide in OR that is barely noticeable here in the United States — the split between "soft OR" and "hard OR." At the risk of oversimplifying (I would certainly be named a "hard OR" person), "hard OR" involves the use of quantitative and mathematical models in analyzing problems while "soft OR" uses qualitative models to look at complex issues, often at the strategic level. While "soft OR" is not unknown on this side of the Atlantic (I am thinking in particular of the interests of some members of our Organization Science section), the terms are unfamiliar to most U.S.-based INFORMS members. Lancaster University and the Operational Research Society have teamed together to create a very interesting set of notes on the use of "soft OR" in "Handling Strategic Problems" (www.orsoc.org.uk/about/teaching/StrategicProblems/index.htm). While somewhat different from my normal view of the field, the pages are well done and provide a good introduction to this approach to problem solving. On the "hard OR" side, John Beasley of Imperial College has put together an extensive series of notes on OR topics called OR-Notes (http://mscmga.ms.ic.ac.uk/jeb/or/contents.html). From a basic introduction to OR through topics like integer programming, network analysis, vehicle routing, decision trees and even "soft OR," Beasley provides a good introduction to almost the entire OR field. Another international site of interest is Moshe Sniedovich's World-Wide-Web for Operations Research and Management Science (WORMS) project (www.worms.ms.unimelb.edu.au) from the University of Melbourne in Australia. While WORMS is undergoing a renovation at the moment, there are pieces worth examining. For instance, tutOR (www.tutor.ms.unimelb.edu.au/) is a collection of java applets illustrating many basic concepts in OR. This is just a bare introduction to the sites on the web with an international flavor. Perhaps the most striking aspect of these sites is how much they have in common rather than how much they differ due to nationality. It seems we are united by operations research more than we are divided by political boundaries. Michael Trick (trick@cmu.edu) is a professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, and the editor of INFORMS Online. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 2000 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060, USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 2000 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.