Potential Of Evolutionary Algorithms Research Articles

A Review on Bilevel Optimization: From Classical to Evolutionary Approaches and Applications

Bilevel optimization is defined as a mathematical program, where an optimization problem contains another optimization problem as a constraint. These problems have received significant attention from the mathematical programming community. Only limited work exists on bilevel problems using evolutionary computation techniques; however, recently there has been an increasing interest due to the proliferation of practical applications and the potential of evolutionary algorithms in tackling these problems. This paper provides a comprehensive review on bilevel optimization from the basic principles to solution strategies; both classical and evolutionary. A number of potential application problems are also discussed. To offer the readers insights on the prominent developments in the field of bilevel optimization, we have performed an automated text-analysis of an extended list of papers published on bilevel optimization to date. This paper should motivate evolutionary computation researchers to pay more attention to this practical yet challenging area.

Multilevel component selection optimization toward an optimal architecture

Component-based software engineering uses components to construct systems, being a means to increase productivity by promoting software reuse. This work deals with the component selection problem. A multiobjective optimization approach is used to formulate the problem. The contribution of the current paper is threefold: the multilevel decomposition approach, the use of both functional and non-functional requirements (cost of a component, thus cost of the solution as sum of the costs of the constituent components) as objectives, and the use of metrics values to evaluate the architecture of the obtained solutions. As advantages over the existing literature we mention: the automatic computation of component interactions and of the constituent components for each module, multiple solutions obtained in a single run, and the new architecture evaluation step based on metrics values that is not present in other approaches. The decomposition offers valuable insights about internal structure of the system which led us to identify metrics to assess coupling and cohesion of the architecture design. The internal structure influences the external quality; thus, a highly cohesive module exhibits high reusability and loosely coupled systems enable easy maintenance. In this context, when selecting the best solution out of a set of available ones, we aim to maximize the cohesion of modules and to minimize the coupling between them, obtaining thus the “best” reusable and maintenable solution. To evaluate our approach, we discuss a case study for building a reservation system. In order to obtain the best parameters to run the evolutionary approach, three different studies were applied. The tests performed show the potential of evolutionary algorithms for this particular problem and for other similar ones.

Noniterative Approach to Dynamic Traffic Origin-Destination Estimation with Parallel Evolutionary Algorithms

This study focuses on updating time-varying demand matrices by using real observation counts from advanced traffic management surveillance systems. A machine-learning technique using advanced evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is developed instead of the more conventional approaches in the literature. This EA-based demand estimation framework is implemented into a model called the Dynamic Origin-Destination (O-D) Estimator (DynODE). The potential of EAs in the dynamic O-D estimation problem lies in their powerful global search and optimization capabilities. DynODE is integrated with an existing dynamic traffic assignment platform (e.g., DYNASMART-P). The EA-based methods in this study are further augmented with EA parallelization to improve the quality and efficiency of the solution. DynODE mainly addresses offline O-D estimation problems. However, online O-D estimation can be achieved with the parallel version of DynODE with sufficient multiprocessing and parallel computing. The developed approach is rigorous...