The european O.R. congresses : what are we doing?, where
are we going?
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Tilanus, C. B. (1982). The european O.R. congresses : what are we doing?, where are we going? European Journal of Operational Research, 10(1), 12-21.
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The European O.R. Congresses: What
are we doing?, Where are we going?
C. B e r n h a r d T I L A N U SEindhoven Universi~ of Technology, Department of Industrial Engineering, Eindhoven, Netherlands
The EURO K congresses become more scientific, as ap- pears from a declining participant/paper ratio. International conferences of other international federations have higher ratios. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the papers are theo- retical, and come from universities.
European congresses are dependent on a strong 'home market'. Compared to North-America wher$ there is about the same potential of O R / M S membership, the European market does not yet seem to be 'saturated'. Medium-sized, central. high-income countries like Germany and France have relatively low shares, probably because of linguistic autarky. The East, European countries have a relatively low share as well.
Compared to North-America, Europe suffers from formida- ble linguistic, economical and political barners, But much can be gained by overcoming them. The EURO K congresses are expected to meet an increasing demand.
1. Introduction
This final paper in the stream on O.R. Method- ology and Education of the Fourth European Con- gress on Operations Research is devoted to the European O.R. congresses themselves, including EURO IV. If I were a systems theorist, I would claim this paper to be a meta-paper. But let us consider this half hour as a short time of reflection about what we are doing and where we are going. The paper is focussed on EURO IV. It updates and partly runs parallel with references [6,8]. In [6] details were given up to and including EURO IIl. In [8] comparisons were made with various con- gresses in Europe at the national level. Here, com- parisons are made with congresses of the Opera- tions Research Society of America (ORSA) and The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) and those of the five international federations par- ticipating i n the Five International Associations Coordinating Committee (FIACC). In addition,
North-Holland Publishing Company
European Journal of Operational Research 10 (1982) 12-21
the relations with the East-European countries are high-lighted.
In Section 2 I give you some facts and figures. In Section 3 we discuss some option&and opinions for the future.
2. Facts and figures
The most striking phenomenon of the series of E U R O K congresses is that the numbers of both participants and papers have increased, but the participants to a much lesser degree; hence the ratio of participants to papers has decreased (see Table 1). Let us call this ratio the degree of profes- sionalism. The higher this ratio, the more there is to learn for the profession. People come to the conference to attend lectures and to learn. Con- versely, if this ratio is low, the conference is more 'scientific'. Relatively many people come to the conference to present a paper, to teach and, if there are proceedings, to publish. So the EURO K congresses have become more scientific.
I can't explain the phenomenon of a declining degree of professionalism. A classification of papers is given in Table 2. There is a double di- chotomy: papers classified as theoretical versus applied, and papers produced by academics versus produced by others. (These dichotomies do not coincide, see the details for EURO IV in Table 4.) After EURO III, I thought there were trends in these percentages. Now, I don't see trends. The classification is liable to error but, I hope, not to bias (cf. [8]). It seems that between two-thirds and three-quarters of all papers are theoretical, i.e., not (yet) applied, and between'two-thirds and three- quarters are produced by academics. I wish there were more applied papers and more papers from outside the academic sphere, but this does not explain the declining participant/paper ratio. A possible explanation may be the deteriorating eco- nomic situation everywhere, which makes it harder to attend a conference without contributing a paper.
C.B. Tilanus / The European O.R. Congresses 13 Table I
Key figures of EURO K, K = I ... 4
EURO K congresses Number of participants programmed no. of papers participants papers I Jan. 1975 Brussels 466 115 4.05 II Nov. 1976 Stockholm 481 171 2.81 l I l April 1979 Amsterdam 508 276 1.84 IV July 1980 Cambridge 568 340 1.67 V July 1982 Lausanne a 400 VI July 1983Vienna VllApril 1985 France
a Jointly with TIMS 25th International Meeting
For EURO III, a cross-section regression analy- sis was performed to explain the. number of par- ticipants per country. Constant elasticities were assumed and the estimated model was, for country
participation~.t 979 = 19.3 × (membership/.1979) °'52 × ( a i r - fare;, t .-o.st
979 )
× residuals.t979
where the explanatory variables are the member- ship of i's OR society and the return air fare from i's main city to Amsterdam in Dfl. This regression formula has been used to predict participation in E U R O IV, as follows:
• • • predicted
parttclpatton~,~gso = 19.3 × (membership~.,9so) °'52
× (air farei.tgso)-°51 × residual~,19~9
where the air fare is now taken between i's main city and London and expressed in Dfl. Current prices were used rather than inflation corrected
prices, in the assumption that travel budgets have remained constant in spite of inflation. Note that the 1979 residual correction factor was applied (assuming an autocorrelation of one, or structural, constant residual deviations for each country). The results are presented in Table 3. The participation of the U.K. cannot be predicted with this model since it would need the logarithm of zero air fare. Participation by the Netherlands has been severely underestimated. The Netherlands would certainly need a correction factor greater than unity, but that could not be estimated in the case of EURO III because air fare to Amsterdam was zero. The large unpredicted participation by Belgium can be explained by the great activities of Jean-Pierre Brans, the Programme Committee Chairman. The participation of France and Germany has im- proved as compared to EURO III, and the par- ticipation of Italy has deteriorated, but Italy had the largest residual correction factor for EURO III when it organized a successful group inclusive tour.
Simple ratios of programmed number of papers to population are presented in Table 5. The court-
Table 2
Double dichotomy of papers
.6Ro I 115 EURO II 17 I ELIRO III 276 EURO IV 340 programmed I no. of papers
theoretical % applied [ % from % from
{
universities others69 31 63 37
64 36 65 35
64 36 75 25
Table 3
EURO IV participation by country, predicted and actual
country population i980 1980 EURO Iii
(in OR Society return air residual millions) membership fare London correction
to main city factor (Dfl.) EURO IV participation predicted EURO IV participation actual a North Norway 4. I Sweden 8.3 Finland 4.8 Den mark 5. I West U.K. 55.8 Ireland 3.4 Netherlands 13.9 Belgium 9.8 France 53.3 Germany. FR 61.3 Austria 7.5 Switzerland 6.3 South Portugal 9.9 Spain 37. I Italy 56.9 Greece 9.4 Turkey 44.3 Israel 3.7 East U.S.S.R. 261.6
German Dem. Rep: 16.8
Poland 35.0 Czechoslovakia 15. I Hungary 10.7 Yugoslavia 22.2 Romania 21.8 Bulgaria 8.8 Albania 2.6 Rest U.S.A, Canada Egypt Algeria Other 798.5 211 1056 0.24 2 5 426 1282 1.66 19 16 250 1640 2.17 17 16 272 1006 1.28 13 14 3371 - 1.06 210 I05 430 0.74 7 5 520 512 (I.00) 21 53 220 512 1.29 17 39 2286 385 0.47 24 36 749 680 1.42 31 44 130 1214 0.71 5 6 311 861 0.80 10 II 279 1029 0.53 6 6 321 965 3.51 41 32 371 1844 0.99 9 8 173 2025 1.29 7 8 214 3027 0.98 5 5 10.209 13 10 5 8 568 Source: references [6.8.9]; IFORS Secretariat.
a Exclusive of 30 accompanying persons.
tries are arranged in descending order of these ratios. The first ten are all small countries, except the U.K. which is the host country of EURO IV. The lower half contains the East-European coun- tries, and France, and Germany. We can think of many reasons why countries occupy the place they
do, but why are France and Germany behind Israel and Greece? France and Germany are geo- graphically closer to the U.K. and have a hisher income per capita. Is less O R work done in these countries or do their rather large national con- presses satisfy their needs for communication [5]?
C.B. Tilanus / The European O.R. Congresses
T a b l e 4
Programmed E U R O I V p a p e r s b y country and c a t e g o r y
c o u n t r y character: theoretical applied
from: university other university othcr
total 15 North N o r w a y - - - 2 2 S w e d e n 5 2 - 7 Finland 6 I - 3 I 0 D e n m a r k 5 I - - 6 West U . K . 31 9 2 0 12 7 2 Ireland I - - - I Netherlands I 7 2 2 5 2 6 B e l g i u m 28 - 8 3 3 9 France 13 I 0 2 3 2 8 G e r m a n y , F R i 8 I I 3 2 3 Austria 3 - - 2 5 Switzerland 4 i - 2 7 South P o r t u g a l . . . . . S p a i n 2 I - - 3 I t a l y 8 10 3 2 i G r e e c e 5 2 3 - i 0 T u r k e y 5 I I I 8 Israel 4 - I - 5 East U . S . S . R . - . . . . G e r m a n Dem. Rep . . . . P o l a n d 6 4 i I 12 C z e c h o s l o v a k i a . . . . . H u n g a r y - 4 - - 4 Y u g o s l a v i a 4 4 - - 8 R o m a n i a I I - - 2 B u l g a r i a . . . . . A l b a n i a . . . . . Rest U . S . A . 15 I 5 2 2 3 C a n a d a 7 - - - 7 E g y p t 2 2 - - 4 A l g e r i a - i - - I O t h e r 2 - 2 2 6 Total 1 9 2 5 8 4 6 4 4 3 4 0 N . B . N o t classified: ! I.
The European congresses are dependent indeed on the 'home market' of the host country. The diagonal elements o f Table 6 show what the host countries contributed to their 'own' EURO con- gress; the much smaller other elements in each row what they contributed to the other EURO con- gresses.
At the initiative of Jakob Kramp, Programme
Committee Chairman of EURO III, a conscious effort was made to involve the East-European countries in EURO III. This resulted in 15 pro- grammed papers. For EURO IV even 26 papers were programraed (see Table7). Yet, the total share of the East-European countries is less than 10 per cent.
Table 5
Countries ranked by: (number of papers programmed for E U R O IV)/(miilion inhabitants)
country programmed no. of papers population (millions) papers population 1. Belgium 39 9.8 3.98 2. Finland 10 4.8 2.08 3. Netherlands 26 13.9 1.87 4. Israel 5 3.7 1.35 5. U K . 72 55.8 1.29 6. Denml~rk 6 5. i I. 18 7. Switzerland 7 6.3 I. I I 8. Greece I 0 9.4 1.06 9. Sweden 7 8.3 0.84 10. Austria 5 7.5 0.67 I I. France 28 53.3 0.53 ! 2. Norway 2 4. ! 0.49 13. Germany, FR , 2 3 61.3 0.38 14, Hungary 4 10.7 0.37 15. Italy 21 56.9 0.37 16. Yugoslavia 8 22.2 0,36 17. Poland 12 35.0 0.34 18. Ireland I 3.4 0.29 19. Turkey 8 44.3 0.18 20. Romania 2 21.8 0.09 2 I. Spain 3 37. I 0.08 Table 6
Home market effect: home and mutual participation of four host countries
participants from E U R O I E U R O I! E U R O III E U R O IV Brussels Stockholm Amsterdam Cambridge
Belgium 118 30 27 39
Sweden 7 197 19 16
Netherlands 97 55 169 53
U.K. 62 36 56 210
Table 7
Contribution of East-European countries
number of programmed participants no. of papers
E U R O I 9 3
E U R O II 5 I
E U R O IIl 15 15 a
E U R O IV 18 26
Of which 13 papers were actually presented.
3. Options and opinions
3.1. Large or small?
Should the EURO K congresses bf, come larger or smaller than they are now? I think they should, and may, in fact, become larger. After all, the continent-wide conferences on OR and manage- ment science in the U.S. have well over 1000 participants on average (see TableS). And our American friends have about the same member- ship potential (total EURO membership is 10,209;
C B. Tilanus / The European O.R. Congresses 17
Table 8
Congresses of Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences
ORSA/TIMS Joint National Meetings Participants
April 1974 Boston 1149
May 1975 Chicago 1003
Nov. 1975 Las Vegas 1500
March 1976 Philadelphia 1040
Nov. 1976 Miami 1263
May 1977 San Francisco 1318
Nov. 1977 Atlanta i 302
May 1978 New York 1421
Nov. 1978 Los Angeles 1337
May 1979 New Orleans 1363
Oct. 1 9 7 9 Milwaukee a 932
May 1980 Washington 1731
Nov. 1980 Colorado Springs 1161
May 1981 Toronto, Canada 1624
Oct. 1981 Houston 1130
April 1982 Detroit Oct. 1982 San Diego TIMS International Meetings Nov. 1974 SanJuan July 1975 Kyoto July 1977 Athens b June 1979 Hawaii July 1982 Lausanne c June 1984 Copenhagen 1190 762 555 851
Source: TIMS Executive Offices, 146 Westminster Street, Pro- vidence, Rhode Island 02903, U.S.A.
" Participants from universities: 46%; participants from outside the US: 55; participant/paper ratio: 1.31.
b Cosponsored by EURO. Participant/paper ratio: 0.84. c Jointly with EURO.
joint ORSA-TIMS membership is I 1,847). Larger conferences can still function well, provided there are a good message system, clear badges, and a good organization generally. Examples in a.related field are the IFIP world congresses with up to 5000 participants (see Table 9).
3.2. Professional or scientific?
A condition for a large conference with thou- sands of participants seems to be that it is profes- sional. There should be sizeable audiences wishing to attend lectures in which relevant research re- sults, surveys or tutorials are presented. Scientific conferences where participants come to 'publish', or to exchange research ideas, should preferably be specialized and small-scale.
Heiner Miiller-Merbach dreads that par- ticipant/paper ratios might asymptotically ap- proach unity [7]. To which I m a y add that unity is not an asymptote. Participants may present more than one paper on average. In the O R S A / T I M S meetings it occurs that participants present up to five papers. This phenomenon is not universal, as is illustrated by the sarvey of triennial world con- gresses of five international federations, which show much higher participant/paper ratios of up to 17.4 (IFIP, 1977, see Table9). These five inter- national federations are:
IFAC - International Federation of Automatic
Control
IFIP - International Federation for Informa-
tion Processing
IFORS - I n t e r n a t i o n a l Federation of Opeca- tional Research Societies
IMACS - I n t e r n a t i o n a l Association for Math- ematics and Computers in Simulation (previously AICA - Association Inter- nationale du Caicul Analogique)
I M E K O - International Measurement Con-
federation.
They are coordinated by FIACC - Five Interna- tional Associations Coordinating Committee, which is an advisory body.
To acbAeve the higher participant/paper ratios of these related federations, I think EURO might take the following actions:
- focus more attention on practitioners both in government and in industry, especially in the host country;
- invite first-class, well-known speakers to give surveys and tutorials;
- reject more poor-quality submitted abstracts, or keep them apart from invited papers and differen- tiate in the times allotted for presentation. (One cannot tell from a good abstract if ,he paper will be good, but one can tell from a messy abstract that the paper will be more messy.)
3.3. Profit or pleasure?
In an interview in a Dutch newspaper, Fortuin [!] suggested to a leading Dutch scientist that international conferences are just pleasure trips. The answer was one lengthy plea for international conferences. What profit do participants take home from an international conference? It may be up-to-
Table 9
Triennial FIACC congresses with numbers of participants/papers
IFORS IFAC IF!P IMACS IMEKO
1955 1956 ! 957 Oxford 250/45 = 5.6 1958 1959 1 9 6 0 Aix-en-Prov. (F) Moscow 350/77 =4.5 1500/285 = 5.3 1961 1962 1963 Oslo Basel 450/82=5.5 1500/171 =8.8 1964 1965 1966 Boston London ./86 1800/299 = 6.0 1967 1968 1969 Venice Warsaw 450/66 = 6.8 1800/313 = 5.8 1970 1971 1972 Dublin Paris 500/(65 + x) 1300/228 = 5.7 1973 1974 1 9 7 5 Tokyo/Kyoto Boston 329/(45 +61)= 3. I" 1300/355 =3.7 1976 1977 1978 Toronlo Helsinki 260/(52 + 28~ = 3.2 1100/330 = 3.3 1979 1980 1981 Hamburg Kyoto 500/280 = 1.8 1500/600 = 2.5 Brussels 450/96=4.7 Strasbourg Budapest ./84 726/134 = 5.4
Opatija (YU) Budapest 300/95 = 3.2 900/131 = 6.9 Munich 2800/ Brighton Stockholm 500/89=5.6 836/I 16=7.2 New York 5ooo/. Lausanne Warsaw 400/134 = 3.0 1200/i 83 = 6.6 Edinburgh 3700/234= 15 8 Munich Versailles 400/104 = 3.8 900/160 = 5.6" Ljubijana (YUI 2500/243 = 10.3 Prague Dresden 545/156=3.5 1200/167=7.2 Stockholm 3000/215= 14.0 Delft (NL) London 400/136=2.9 600/154=3.9 Toronto 2700/155 = 17.4 Tokyo/Melbourne ./149
Sorento (I) Moscow 350/125 = 2.8 1260/257 = 4.9
1982 Montreal Berlin (West)
1983 Paris
Source: Secretariats of the individual International Federations; IFIP Foundation, Paulus Potterstraat 40, 1071 DB Amsterdam, Netherlands; references [23,4].
CB. Tilanus / The European O.R. Congresses 19
date scientific results, or good ideas, or acquain- tance with the fight people. If a researcher has worked for a year on a wrong idea, the loss may equal the costs of 50 conference visits. The dif- ference is that the costs of working one year on a wrong idea are less visible, and a conference visit means out-of-pocket expenses. It must be granted that many people find international traveling pleasant. But there is nothing against this as long as it is an adventitious advantage of conferences. 1 may add that the EURO 11I conference must have been an exception. In the opinion of the profes- sional organizers of the Amsterdam Congress Centre, never before had the participants of a conference been more devoted to attending lec- tures and had the men paid less attention to the female staff.
The EURO congresses are lacking one im- portant feature of their North-American counter- parts. The North-American meetings function as a labour market. An "employment opportunities program" bringing together supply and demand is even explicitly organized. In Europe, general mo- bility is so low and national barriers are so high that the EURO congresses may exchange ideas, but not people, for a long time to come.
To my mind, the first and foremost obstacle to efficient communication within Europe is the lan- guage barriers. Native languages in Europe amount to more than twenty. I have nothing more to say about that, but there are also formidable barriers of a political and economic nature. Let us finally consider these barriers.
3.4. Involve the East-European countries
When I attended a joint IFAC-IFORS con- ference in Warsaw in June t980 1 noticed that they had two different participants lists. One was headed "Socialist countries", the other "Capitalist countries". I am sure we would have called these respective categories "Communist countries" and "Countries with market economies". The iron cur- tain may not be iron any more, but still is kind of a curtain. And a challenge.
How can we involve the East-European coun- tries more in the EURO K congresses and increase their share which is now below 10 per cent.'? I think the EURO Association, and IFORS, should start establishing membership within these countries. A survey of national memberships of the five inter-
national federations (Table 10) shows that the four other federations are well established in East- Europe. I F O R S / E U R O may be well established in the other parts of Europe, but it is nearly nowhere in the East.
One might object that IFORS is the only feder- ation explicitly consisting of societies and societies don't exist in the communist countries. Here, there are two things to be observed. In the first place, there exists in the East some kind of organization which they call a "scientific society"; the statutes and by-laws of I F O R S / E U R O do not specify what kind of society the members should be except "established national societies whose primary ob- ject individually is advancement of operational research". In the second place, both IFORS and EURO recognize a different form of membership. IFORS uses the term "Kindred Societies", which may be "any organisation interested in operational research or in the activities of the Federation" and hence need not be a society. EURO uses the term "Associate Members", which may be "'other bod- ies which do not qualify for full membership" and hence need not be a society either.
In conclusion, there seems to be no formal or political objection against establishing member- ship within the East-European countries. What remains, however, are economic difficulties.
3. 5. Finances and fees
European conferences will never be cheap. For the time being, they are much more expensive than their N o r t h - A m e r i c a n counterparts, l n t r a - European air fares are expensive (see Table3); Europe lacks big efficient hotels able to put up a whole conference; organization and communica- tion in Europe is slow and expensive.
The EURO Association should accumulate enough finances to be able to guarantee financially the organization of a European congress. When the financial risks can be fully supported, the fee can be decreased to the mathematical expectation of the ratio between net costs and the number of participants.
The optimal fee is not the barest possible minimum. Many participants, especially non- academics, want a decent standard of living and some adventitious attractiveness of the conference site (for example: Cambridge). But no doubt the optimal fee should be lower than it has been up to
Table l0
National memberships of International Federations
E U R O IFORS I F A C I F I P IMACS I M E K O North Norway S S S S P Sweden S S I S P Finland S S S S P Denmark S S S S P West U.K. S S I S P Ireland S S - S P Netherlands S S S S P Belgium S S S S P Ftat~ce S S S S P Germany, F R S S S S P Austria S S I S P Switzerland S S S S P South Portugal . . . . . Spain S S I I P Italy S S I S P Greece S S I - P, Turkey S S S - - Israel S S S S P, East U.S.S.R. - - I I P
German Dem. Rep. - - I I -
Poland - - I I P Czechoslovakia - K I I P, Hungary - - I S P Yugoslavia A - I I P Romania - - I - - Bulgaria - - I I P Albania . . . . . S S S S S S S S S
Source: See Table 9.
Legenda: S = n a f i o n a i member society~ I = n a t i o n a l member institution:
P = personal member(s); A - Associate Member: K = Kindred Society.
EURO IV. Many participants have great economic difficulties to attend a EURO conference. I am thinking of people from East-European countries where hard currencies are scarce, of young academics and students, of invited speakers and committee members already sacrificing a great deal of time and ~ o n e y for the conference. It is doubt- ful whether differentiated fees should be applied. It would seem impossible to z0rninister and check a fair scheme. Should the fee be a funcdan of ~er capita income in a country? But the East-European countries do not even publish per capita income. Nevertheless, there are enough reasons to try to keep fees low, even if not differentiated.
In the middle of the present economic distress that seems to increase and spread everywhere, let us try to achieve that the European O.R. con- gresses increasingly function and flourish!
References
[I] L. Fortuin, Wetenschappefijk congres of gewoon snoepreisje? (Scientific congress or just a pleasure trip?). N R C Handelsblad, 2 April 1980, p, i i.
[2| iaternationai Federation of Automatic Control, " I F A C in- formation: aims, structure, activities", IFAC Secretariat, Sehlossplatz 12, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria. 1979.
C.B. Tilanus / The European O.R. Congresses 21 Information Bulletin No. 14, January 1980, IFIP Secretariat,
3 rue du March~, CH-1204 Geneva, Switzerland.
[4] International Measurement Confederation, IMEKO Bulle- tin Vol. 8, No. 2, November 1979, IMEKO Secretariat, 1371 Budapest, P.O. Box 457, Hungary.
[5] E. Jacquet-Lagr~e, Va-t-on oublier rEurope?, Le Monde 13 Octobre 198 I, p. 2.
[6] J. Krarup and C.B. Tilanus, Report on EURO Ill, European J. Operational Res. 5 0980) 292-301.
[7] H. Milller-Merbach. Asymptotisch zum Tagungsquotienten I? (Asymptotically towards a conference ratio of I?). DGOR-Buli. 16 (1979) 6.
f3] C.B. Tilanus, Trends in the European Operations Research Congresses, Interfaces l0 (5) (1980) 33-38.
[9] United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, March 1980. Estimates of mid-year population.
