This book is the result of the International Symposium on Semi- Markov
Processes and their Applications held on June 4-7, 1984 at the
Universite Libre de Bruxelles with the help of the FNRS (Fonds National
de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium), the Ministere de l'Education
Nationale (Belgium) and the Bernoulli Society for Mathe- matical
Statistics and Probability. This international meeting was planned to
make a state of the art for the area of semi-Markov theory and its
applications, to bring together researchers in this field and to create
a platform for open and thorough discussion. Main themes of the
Symposium are the first ten sections of this book. The last section
presented here gives an exhaustive biblio- graphy on semi-Markov
processes for the last ten years. Papers selected for this book are all
invited papers and in addition some contributed papers retained after
strong refereeing. Sections are I. Markov additive processes and
regenerative systems II. Semi-Markov decision processes III. Algorithmic
and computer-oriented approach IV. Semi-Markov models in economy and
insurance V. Semi-Markov processes and reliability theory VI. Simulation
and statistics for semi-Markov processes VII. Semi-Markov processes and
queueing theory VIII. Branching IX. Applications in medicine X.
Applications in other fields v PREFACE XI. A second bibliography on
semi-Markov processes It is interesting to quote that sections IV to X
represent a good sample of the main applications of semi-Markov
processes i. e.