Advances In Metaheuristics For Hard Optimization

Many advances have recently been made in metaheuristic methods, from theory to applications. The editors, both leading experts in this field, have assembled a team of researchers to contribute 21 chapters organized into parts on simulated annealing, tabu search, ant colony algorithms, general purpose studies of evolutionary algorithms, applications of evolutionary algorithms, and metaheuristics.

Contains case studies from engineering and operations research Includes commented literature for each chapter

Metaheuristics have been a very active research topic for more than two decades. During this time many new metaheuristic strategies have been devised, they have been experimentally tested and improved on challenging benchmark problems, and they have proven to be important tools for tackling optimization tasks in a large number of practical applications. In other words, metaheuristics are nowadays established as one of the main search paradigms for tackling computationally hard problems. Still, there are a large number of research challenges in the area of metaheuristics. These challenges range from more fundamental questions on theoretical properties and performance guarantees, empirical algorithm analysis, the effective configuration of metaheuristic algorithms, approaches to combine metaheuristics with other algorithmic techniques, towards extending the available techniques to tackle ever more challenging problems. This edited volume grew out of the contributions presented at the ninth Metaheuristics International Conference that was held in Udine, Italy, 25-28 July 2011. The conference comprised 117 presentations of peer-reviewed contributions and 3 invited talks, and it has been attended by 169 delegates. The chapters that are collected in this book exemplify contributions to several of the research directions outlined above.

Finding exact solutions to many combinatorial optimization problems in busi ness, engineering, and science still poses a real challenge, despite the impact of recent advances in mathematical programming and computer technology. New fields of applications, such as computational biology, electronic commerce, and supply chain management, bring new challenges and needs for algorithms and optimization techniques. Metaheuristics are master procedures that guide and modify the operations of subordinate heuristics, to produce improved approx imate solutions to hard optimization problems with respect to more simple algorithms. They also provide fast and robust tools, producing high-quality solutions in reasonable computation times. The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Tech niques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimiza tion problems. A very large nmnber of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry.

This book highlights state-of-the-art developments in metaheuristics research. It examines all aspects of metaheuristic research including new algorithmic developments, applications, new research challenges, theoretical developments, implementation issues, in-depth experimental studies. The book is divided into two sections. Part I is focused on new optimization and modeling techniques based on metaheuristics. The chapters in this section cover topics from multi-objective problems with fuzzy data with triangular-valued objective functions, to hyper-heuristics optimization methodology, designing genetic algorithms, and also the cuckoo search algorithm. The techniques described help to enhance the usability and increase the potential of metaheuristic algorithms. Part II showcases advanced metaheuristic approaches to solve real-life applications issues. This includes an examination of scheduling, the vehicle routing problem, multimedia sensor network, supplier selection, bin packing, objects tracking, and radio frequency identification. In the fields covered in the chapters are of high-impact applications of metaheuristics. The chapters offer innovative applications of metaheuristics that have a potential of widening research frontiers. Altogether, this book offers a comprehensive look at how researchers are currently using metaheuristics in different domains of design and application.

This book explores new alternative metaheuristic developments that have proved to be effective in their application to several complex problems. Though most of the new metaheuristic algorithms considered offer promising results, they are nevertheless still in their infancy. To grow and attain their full potential, new metaheuristic methods must be applied in a great variety of problems and contexts, so that they not only perform well in their reported sets of optimization problems, but also in new complex formulations. The only way to accomplish this is to disseminate these methods in various technical areas as optimization tools. In general, once a scientist, engineer or practitioner recognizes a problem as a particular instance of a more generic class, he/she can select one of several metaheuristic algorithms that guarantee an expected optimization performance. Unfortunately, the set of options are concentrated on algorithms whose popularity and high proliferation outstrip those of the new developments. This structure is important, because the authors recognize this methodology as the best way to help researchers, lecturers, engineers and practitioners solve their own optimization problems.

Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimizations comprises a carefully refereed selection of extended versions of the best papers presented at the Second Meta-Heuristics Conference (MIC 97). The selected articles describe the most recent developments in theory and applications of meta-heuristics, heuristics for specific problems, and comparative case studies. The book is divided into six parts, grouped mainly by the techniques considered. The extensive first part with twelve papers covers tabu search and its application to a great variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems (including the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and vehicle routing problems). In the second part we find one paper where tabu search and simulated annealing are investigated comparatively and two papers which consider hybrid methods combining tabu search with genetic algorithms. The third part has four papers on genetic and evolutionary algorithms. Part four arrives at a new paradigm within meta-heuristics. The fifth part studies the behavior of parallel local search algorithms mainly from a tabu search perspective. The final part examines a great variety of additional meta-heuristics topics, including neural networks and variable neighbourhood search as well as guided local search. Furthermore, the integration of meta-heuristics with the branch-and-bound paradigm is investigated.

This book’s aim is to provide several different kinds of information: a delineation of general metaheuristics methods, a number of state-of-the-art articles from a variety of well-known classical application areas as well as an outlook to modern computational methods in promising new areas. Therefore, this book may equally serve as a textbook in graduate courses for students, as a reference book for people interested in engineering or social sciences, and as a collection of new and promising avenues for researchers working in this field.