Information sciences and communication technologies are increasingly both a main focus and a major application of well-established as well as emerging theories and techniques. Examples are Operations Research, Graph Theory and Queueing Theory, in addition to Stochastic Search, to state just a few.
On October 27-29, 2003, the first edition of the "International Network Optimization Conference" took place in Evry/Paris (France). The aim of this conference was to bring together people from those disciplines with a main focus on network optimization. This was the first time a conference completely devoted to network optimization took place in Europe. The broad participation to the conference - 165 papers have been submitted - is an indication for the need for such events in Europe.
During the conference, several discussions took place about the need to develop links between the participants between the conferences, and to have a group responsible for the future editions of the conference. The idea of a European Network Optimization Group (ENOG) was born. Several participants marked their intention to join the group.
It was decided that INOC would be the conference of ENOG, to take place every two years (alternating with INFORMS Telecommunications Network Optimization Conference, that takes place every two years in USA). The first INOC conference was organized by Walid Ben-Ameur, and the Optimization Team of the INT (France) in Evry-Paris, France, 2003. The 2005 edition took place at the University of Lisbon, organized by Luis Gouveia.
