Adaptive Tabu Tenure Computation in Local Search -- A Conflict Tabu Search Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems -- Cooperative Particle Swarm Optimization for the Delay Constrained Least Cost Path Problem -- Effective Neighborhood Structures for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem -- Efficient Local Search Limitation Strategies for Vehicle Routing Problems -- Evolutionary Local Search for the Minimum Energy Broadcast Problem -- Exploring Multi-objective PSO and GRASP-PR for Rule Induction -- An Extended Beam-ACO Approach to the Time and Space Constrained Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem -- Graph Colouring Heuristics Guided by Higher Order Graph Properties -- A Hybrid Column Generation Approach for the Berth Allocation Problem -- Hybrid Metaheuristic for the Prize Collecting Travelling Salesman Problem -- An ILS Based Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery and Time Limit -- An Immune Genetic Algorithm Based on Bottleneck Jobs for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem -- Improved Construction Heuristics and Iterated Local Search for the Routing and Wavelength Assignment Problem -- Improving Metaheuristic Performance by Evolving a Variable Fitness Function -- Improving Query Expansion with Stemming Terms: A New Genetic Algorithm Approach -- Inc*: An Incremental Approach for Improving Local Search Heuristics -- Metaheuristics for the Bi-objective Ring Star Problem -- Multiobjective Prototype Optimization with Evolved Improvement Steps -- Optimising Multiple Kernels for SVM by Genetic Programming -- Optimization of Menu Layouts by Means of Genetic Algorithms -- A Path Relinking Approach with an Adaptive Mechanism to Control Parameters for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows -- Reactive Stochastic Local Search Algorithms for the Genomic Median Problem -- Solving Graph Coloring Problems Using Learning Automata.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization, EvoCOP 2008, held in Naples, Italy, in March 2008. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers present the latest research and discuss current developments and applications in metaheuristics - a paradigm to effectively solve difficult combinatorial optimization problems appearing in various industrial, economical, and scientific domains. Prominent examples of metaheuristics are evolutionary algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu search, scatter search, memetic algorithms, variable neighborhood search, iterated local search, greedy randomized adaptive search procedures, estimation of distribution algorithms and ant colony optimization.