This handbook is an endeavour to cover many current, relevant, and essential topics related to decision sciences in a scientific manner. Using this handbook, graduate students, researchers, as well as practitioners from engineering, statistics, sociology, economics, etc. will find a new and refreshing paradigm shift as to how these topics can be put to use beneficially. Starting from the basics to advanced concepts, authors hope to make the readers well aware of the different theoretical and practical ideas, which are the focus of study in decision sciences nowadays. It includes an excellent bibliography/reference/journal list, information about a variety of datasets, illustrated pseudo-codes, and discussion of future trends in research.

Covering topics ranging from optimization, networks and games, multi-objective optimization, inventory theory, statistical methods, artificial neural networks, times series analysis, simulation modeling, decision support system, data envelopment analysis, queueing theory, etc., this reference book is an attempt to make this area more meaningful for varied readers. Noteworthy features of this handbook are in-depth coverage of different topics, solved practical examples, unique datasets for a variety of examples in the areas of decision sciences, in-depth analysis of problems through colored charts, 3D diagrams, and discussions about software.

Raghu Nandan Sengupta completed his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India and his FPM (PhD) from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India with specialization in operations management. His research interests are in sequential analysis, decision sciences, and optimization and its use in financial optimization. His research work has been published in journals such as Metrika, European Journal of Operational Research, Sequential Analysis, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Communications in Statistics: Simulation and Computation, Quantitative Finance, etc. He is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and teaches courses such as probability and statistics, stochastic processes and their applications, financial risk management, etc. He is the recipient of the IUSSTF Fellowship 2008 and visited the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University, USA, the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship 2011 of University of Warsaw, Poland, and the second Erasmus Mundus Fellowship 2014 from Instituto Superior Tecnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He is also an editorial board member of the Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences and Open Journal of Statistics.

Joydeep Dutta received his PhD in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India with specialization in nonsmooth optimization. Consequently, he did his postdoctoral studies in the Indian Statistical Institute, India and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. His main research interests are in abstract convexity, nonsmooth optimization, and vector optimization. He has published over 45 papers in journals such as Optimization, Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Journal of Convex Analysis, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Journal of Global Optimization, Operation Research Letters, SIAM Journal of Optimization, Mathematical Programming, etc. He also has two books to his credit, which have been published by Alpha Science International, UK and by CRC Press of Taylor & Francis, respectively. He is currently serving as a professor in the economics group at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. Until June 2014, he was a professor in the Department of Mathematics of the same institute.

Aparna Gupta is a faculty member in the Finance and Accounting Department of the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). She is the director of the MS program on quantitative finance and risk analytics at Lally School and the director of Lally School's Center for Financial Studies. She holds a joint appointment at the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department in the School of Engineering at RPI. Dr. Gupta has developed and taught courses on corporate finance, financial computations, derivatives, risk management, and financial simulations at the Lally School of Management. She is the author of the book Risk Management and Simulation, published by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis in June 2013. Dr. Gupta's research interests are in risk management, financial engineering, and financial decision support. She has addressed a range of issues in risk management at the individual and institutional levels, including with financial network considerations. She conducts the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded research in financial innovation for risk management in network domains, such as electricity markets and communication network. Her research has been published in reputed journals such as Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Physica A, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Financial Engineering, Journal of Financial Stability, Annals of Operations Research, Computational Optimization and Applications, Journal of Computational Finance, Computer Networks, Electricity Journal, etc. Dr. Gupta serves on the editorial board and as a reviewer for several business, finance, and management science journals, and is the past chair of the financial services section of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). She is also a member of AFA, WFA, FMA, IAQF, INFORMS, and IEEE. Dr. Gupta earned her doctorate from Stanford University and her BSc and MSc degrees in mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.