The interest for issues related to the social responsibility of Operations Research has been growing. Within this context three lines of research are being pursued, one is related to the Ethical aspects of the Operations Research activity, the second regards the use of System Dynamics techniques for complex societal problems, and the third is concerned with the use of O.R. techniques in conflict prevention.
Within the first research line, the relevance of ethics in Operations Research has been investigated, and two ethical principles, which can help O.R. researchers and practitioners in their activity have been presented and discussed in [43]. A survey on the subject is provided in [18].
As for the societal applications of System Dynamics, a model to help decision makers in the process of allocating resources to the different activities in the Public Education area in a medium size Municipality has been built; it includes a population submodel, which allows us to take into account the dynamics of the aging and immigration of the population [7]. The problem of designing new paradigms for participative processes for decisions characterized by high environmental impact is being studied.
Finally, the use of O.R. techniques such as clustering, multicriteria analysis and logic functions analysis, for monitoring areas of potential conflict and for anticipating the outbreak of violent confrontations is being investigated [44].