The 17th Symposium on Operations Research was held at Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, August 25-28, 1992, as the annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Mathematik, Ökonomie und Operations Research (GMÖOR). The aim of this book is to provide a timely and comprehensive documentation of the symposium's scientific activities. It contains extended abstracts of most of the papers presented there. The symposium fell into twelve sections and an overlapping cross-section workshop. The sections covered established fields of theory and application such as (1) Mathematical Modelling in OR, (2) Stochastic Models of OR, (3) Combinatorial Optimization and Discrete Mathematics, (4) Linear and Non-Linear Optimization, (5) Systems and Control Theory, (6) Decision Support and Information Systems, (7) Applications in Business and Economics, (8) Econometrics and Statistics, (9) Micro-Economics and Game Theory, Macro-Economics and Applied Economics, Decision Theory, Utility and Risk, Banking, Finance and Insurance. As a novelty and an experiment, a cross-section workshop on Environmental Systems and Economics had been included in the program which was devoted to a topic of current political and scientific interest.