Evolutionary Computation (EC) involves the study of problem solving and op- mization techniques
inspired by principles of natural evolution and genetics. EC has been able to draw the
attention of an increasing number of researchers and practitioners in several ?elds.
Evolutionary algorithms have in particular been
showntobee?ectivefordi?cultcombinatorialoptimizationproblemsappearing in various industrial
economic and scienti?c domains. This volume contains the proceedings of EvoCOP 2004 the 4th
European ConferenceonEvolutionaryComputationinCombinatorialOptimization.Itwas held in Coimbra
Portugal on April 5 7 2004 jointly with EuroGP 2004 the 7th European Conference on Genetic
Programming and EvoWorkshops 2004 which consisted of the following six individual workshops:
EvoBIO the 2nd - ropean Workshop on Evolutionary Bioinformatics EvoCOMNET the 1st - ropean
Workshop on Evolutionary Computation in Communications Networks and Connected Systems EvoHOT
the 1st European Workshop on Hardware Optimisation EvoIASP the 6th European Workshop on
Evolutionary Com- tation in Image Analysis and Signal Processing EvoMUSART the 2nd Eu- pean
Workshop on Evolutionary Music and Art and EvoSTOC the 1st Eu- pean Workshop on Evolutionary
Algorithms in Stochastic and Dynamic En- ronments.
