Metaheuristics For Finding Multiple Solutions

This book presents the latest trends and developments in multimodal optimization and niching techniques. Most existing optimization methods are designed for locating a single global solution. However, in real-world settings, many problems are “multimodal” by nature, i.e., multiple satisfactory solutions exist. It may be desirable to locate several such solutions before deciding which one to use. Multimodal optimization has been the subject of intense study in the field of population-based meta-heuristic algorithms, e.g., evolutionary algorithms (EAs), for the past few decades. These multimodal optimization techniques are commonly referred to as “niching” methods, because of the nature-inspired “niching” effect that is induced to the solution population targeting at multiple optima. Many niching methods have been developed in the EA community. Some classic examples include crowding, fitness sharing, clearing, derating, restricted tournament selection, speciation, etc. Nevertheless, applying these niching methods to real-world multimodal problems often encounters significant challenges. To facilitate the advance of niching methods in facing these challenges, this edited book highlights the latest developments in niching methods. The included chapters touch on algorithmic improvements and developments, representation, and visualization issues, as well as new research directions, such as preference incorporation in decision making and new application areas. This edited book is a first of this kind specifically on the topic of niching techniques. This book will serve as a valuable reference book both for researchers and practitioners. Although chapters are written in a mutually independent way, Chapter 1 will help novice readers get an overview of the field. It describes the development of the field and its current state and provides a comparative analysis of the IEEE CEC and ACM GECCO niching competitions of recent years, followed by a collection of open research questions and possible research directions that may be tackled in the future.

This book provides both the research and practitioner communities with a comprehensive coverage of the metaheuristic methodologies that have proven to be successful in a wide variety of real-world problem settings. Moreover, it is these metaheuristic strategies that hold particular promise for success in the future. The various chapters serve as stand alone presentations giving both the necessary background underpinnings as well as practical guides for implementation.

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.

Multi-Objective Optimization in Theory and Practice is a simplified two-part approach to multi-objective optimization (MOO) problems. This second part focuses on the use of metaheuristic algorithms in more challenging practical cases. The book includes ten chapters that cover several advanced MOO techniques. These include the determination of Pareto-optimal sets of solutions, metaheuristic algorithms, genetic search algorithms and evolution strategies, decomposition algorithms, hybridization of different metaheuristics, and many-objective (more than three objectives) optimization and parallel computation. The final section of the book presents information about the design and types of fifty test problems for which the Pareto-optimal front is approximated. For each of them, the package NSGA-II is used to approximate the Pareto-optimal front. It is an essential handbook for students and teachers involved in advanced optimization courses in engineering, information science and mathematics degree programs.

Metaheuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers is a peer-reviewed volume of eighteen current, cutting-edge papers by leading researchers in the field. Included are an invited paper by F. Glover and G. Kochenberger, which discusses the concept of Metaheuristic agent processes, and a tutorial paper by M.G.C. Resende and C.C. Ribeiro discussing GRASP with path-relinking. Other papers discuss problem-solving approaches to timetabling, automated planograms, elevators, space allocation, shift design, cutting stock, flexible shop scheduling, colorectal cancer and cartography. A final group of methodology papers clarify various aspects of Metaheuristics from the computational view point.

This book discusses the main techniques and newest trends to manage and optimize the production and service systems. The book begins by examining the three main levels of decision systems in production: the long term (strategic), the middle term (tactical) and short term (operational). It also considers online management as a new level (a sub level of the short term). As each level encounters specific problems, appropriate approaches to deal with these are introduced and explained. These problems include the line design, the line balancing optimization, the physical layout of the production or service system, the forecasting optimization, the inventory management, the scheduling etc. Metaheuristics for Production Systems then explores logistic optimization from two different perspectives: internal (production management), addressing issues of scheduling, layout and line designs, and external (supply chain management) focusing on transportation optimization, supply chain evaluation, and location of production. The book also looks at NP-hard problems that are common in production management. These complex configurations may mean that optimal solutions may not be reached due to variables, but the authors help provide a good solution for such problems. The effective new results and solutions offered in this book should appeal to researchers, managers, and engineers in the production and service industries.

This book demonstrates the metaheuristic methodologies that apply to maximum diversity problems to solve them. Maximum diversity problems arise in many practical settings from facility location to social network analysis and constitute an important class of NP-hard problems in combinatorial optimization. In fact, this volume presents a “missing link” in the combinatorial optimization-related literature. In providing the basic principles and fundamental ideas of the most successful methodologies for discrete optimization, this book allows readers to create their own applications for other discrete optimization problems. Additionally, the book is designed to be useful and accessible to researchers and practitioners in management science, industrial engineering, economics, and computer science, while also extending value to non-experts in combinatorial optimization. Owed to the tutorials presented in each chapter, this book may be used in a master course, a doctoral seminar, or as supplementary to a primary text in upper undergraduate courses. The chapters are divided into three main sections. The first section describes a metaheuristic methodology in a tutorial style, offering generic descriptions that, when applied, create an implementation of the methodology for any optimization problem. The second section presents the customization of the methodology to a given diversity problem, showing how to go from theory to application in creating a heuristic. The final part of the chapters is devoted to experimentation, describing the results obtained with the heuristic when solving the diversity problem. Experiments in the book target the so-called MDPLIB set of instances as a benchmark to evaluate the performance of the methods.

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.