Welcome to the official website for the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and Operations Research Practice in Africa (ORPA) joint annual conference 2008. This year's conference will be for the first time a joint effort between ORPA  INFORMS and the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). It will be scheduled at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC for October 10 -11, 2008 (the Friday and Saturday immediately preceding the 2008 INFORMS Conference) .

The 2008 ORPA/INFORMS/IFORS conference is focused on the use of Operations Research (OR) in Africa to aid development and promote sustainable growth through the use of some of the cutting edge techniques unique to our field.

Two topics, corresponding to each day, will be precisely addressed : Urban Transportation Management Issues in Africa and Water Resource Management Issues in Africa.

We seek in "Urban Transportation Management Issues" contributions on the following fields :

• Transport network design

• Transversals studies between Network Design and Urban Population Dynamic

• Traffic Control

• Multimodal Freight Network Design

• Public transportation studies

• Numerical Simulation

• etc.

We seek in "Water Resource Management Issues" :

• Water Network Design, Management and Control

• Delivery Water Resource Management Optmisation

• Real-time management of Water Resources

• Numerical simulation

• etc.

We also invite submissions covering other topics related to OR for development as well as OR applications in government and industry.

The conference is intended to bring academics from all over the world together to discuss and present some of the most recent developments in our field. It is also intended as a vehicle to bring industry and the academic world together in order to produce effective and accurate relationships that may result in effective and beneficial implementations of OR in practice.