Algorithms are a central concept in computer science. The
German Science Foundation (DFG) started a special joint
initiative on data structures and efficient algorithms in
1986 with the aim of encouraging collaborative research on
algorithms. For a period of five years about a dozen
projects were funded with an emphasis on algorithms and data
structures for geometric problems, on the one hand, and
parallel and distributed algorithms, on the other.
This volume contains 18 papers that are intended to give an
impression of the achievements of this joint research
initiative. The first group of papers addresses research on
fundamental data structures, computational geometry, graph
algorithms, computer graphics, and spatial databases. The
second group of papers centers on the following problems:
the design of parallel architectures and routing strategies,
simulation of parallel machines, and the design of
distributed algorithms for solving difficult problems.