This book is devoted to the study and optimization of spatiotem- ral stochastic processes. These are processes that simultaneously - velop in space and time under random influences. Such processes - cur almost everywhere when the global behavior of complex systems is studied, e.g., in physical and technical systems, population dynamics, neural networks, computer and telecommunication networks, complex production networks and flexible manufacturing systems, logistic n- works and transportation systems, environmental engineering, climate modeling and prediction, earth surface models, and so on. In the study of spatiotemporal stochastic processes the classical c- cepts of random fields (which are models for spatially distributed r- dom phenomena) and of stochastic processes (hich are usually thought to describe the evolution over time of systems under random influences) converge. Over the last twenty years,many research monographs were written with emphasis on this unifying point of view, as were a huge number of articles and papers on this subject.
