Enhancing Evolutionary Algorithms With Pattern Mining for Sparse Large-Scale Multi-Objective Optimization Problems

Sparse large-scale multi-objective optimization problems(SLMOPs)are common in science and engineering.However,the large-scale problem represents the high dimensionality of the decision space,requiring algorithms to traverse vast expanse with limited computational resources.Furthermore,in the context of sparse,most variables in Pareto optimal solutions are zero,making it difficult for algorithms to identify non-zero variables efficiently.This paper is dedicated to addressing the challenges posed by SLMOPs.To start,we introduce innovative objective functions customized to mine maximum and minimum candidate sets.This substantial enhancement dramatically improves the efficacy of frequent pattern mining.In this way,selecting candidate sets is no longer based on the quantity of nonzero variables they contain but on a higher proportion of nonzero variables within specific dimensions.Additionally,we unveil a novel approach to association rule mining,which delves into the intricate relationships between non-zero variables.This novel methodology aids in identifying sparse distributions that can potentially expedite reductions in the objective function value.We extensively tested our algorithm across eight benchmark problems and four real-world SLMOPs.The results demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive solutions across various challenges.

An Immune-Inspired Approach with Interval Allocation in Solving Multimodal Multi-Objective Optimization Problems with Local Pareto Sets

In practical engineering,multi-objective optimization often encounters situations where multiple Pareto sets(PS)in the decision space correspond to the same Pareto front(PF)in the objective space,known as Multi-Modal Multi-Objective Optimization Problems(MMOP).Locating multiple equivalent global PSs poses a significant challenge in real-world applications,especially considering the existence of local PSs.Effectively identifying and locating both global and local PSs is a major challenge.To tackle this issue,we introduce an immune-inspired reproduction strategy designed to produce more offspring in less crowded,promising regions and regulate the number of offspring in areas that have been thoroughly explored.This approach achieves a balanced trade-off between exploration and exploitation.Furthermore,we present an interval allocation strategy that adaptively assigns fitness levels to each antibody.This strategy ensures a broader survival margin for solutions in their initial stages and progressively amplifies the differences in individual fitness values as the population matures,thus fostering better population convergence.Additionally,we incorporate a multi-population mechanism that precisely manages each subpopulation through the interval allocation strategy,ensuring the preservation of both global and local PSs.Experimental results on 21 test problems,encompassing both global and local PSs,are compared with eight state-of-the-art multimodal multi-objective optimization algorithms.The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm in simultaneously identifying global Pareto sets and locally high-quality PSs.

Even Search in a Promising Region for Constrained Multi-Objective Optimization

In recent years, a large number of approaches to constrained multi-objective optimization problems(CMOPs) have been proposed, focusing on developing tweaked strategies and techniques for handling constraints. However, an overly finetuned strategy or technique might overfit some problem types,resulting in a lack of versatility. In this article, we propose a generic search strategy that performs an even search in a promising region. The promising region, determined by obtained feasible non-dominated solutions, possesses two general properties.First, the constrained Pareto front(CPF) is included in the promising region. Second, as the number of feasible solutions increases or the convergence performance(i.e., approximation to the CPF) of these solutions improves, the promising region shrinks. Then we develop a new strategy named even search,which utilizes the non-dominated solutions to accelerate convergence and escape from local optima, and the feasible solutions under a constraint relaxation condition to exploit and detect feasible regions. Finally, a diversity measure is adopted to make sure that the individuals in the population evenly cover the valuable areas in the promising region. Experimental results on 45 instances from four benchmark test suites and 14 real-world CMOPs have demonstrated that searching evenly in the promising region can achieve competitive performance and excellent versatility compared to 11 most state-of-the-art methods tailored for CMOPs.

Energy-Saving Distributed Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Optimization with Dual Resource Constraints Based on Integrated Q-Learning Multi-Objective Grey Wolf Optimizer

The distributed flexible job shop scheduling problem(DFJSP)has attracted great attention with the growth of the global manufacturing industry.General DFJSP research only considers machine constraints and ignores worker constraints.As one critical factor of production,effective utilization of worker resources can increase productivity.Meanwhile,energy consumption is a growing concern due to the increasingly serious environmental issues.Therefore,the distributed flexible job shop scheduling problem with dual resource constraints(DFJSP-DRC)for minimizing makespan and total energy consumption is studied in this paper.To solve the problem,we present a multi-objective mathematical model for DFJSP-DRC and propose a Q-learning-based multi-objective grey wolf optimizer(Q-MOGWO).In Q-MOGWO,high-quality initial solutions are generated by a hybrid initialization strategy,and an improved active decoding strategy is designed to obtain the scheduling schemes.To further enhance the local search capability and expand the solution space,two wolf predation strategies and three critical factory neighborhood structures based on Q-learning are proposed.These strategies and structures enable Q-MOGWO to explore the solution space more efficiently and thus find better Pareto solutions.The effectiveness of Q-MOGWO in addressing DFJSP-DRC is verified through comparison with four algorithms using 45 instances.The results reveal that Q-MOGWO outperforms comparison algorithms in terms of solution quality.

A Survey of Evolutionary Algorithms for Multi-Objective Optimization Problems With Irregular Pareto Fronts

Evolutionary algorithms have been shown to be very successful in solving multi-objective optimization problems(MOPs).However,their performance often deteriorates when solving MOPs with irregular Pareto fronts.To remedy this issue,a large body of research has been performed in recent years and many new algorithms have been proposed.This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the research on MOPs with irregular Pareto fronts.We start with a brief introduction to the basic concepts,followed by a summary of the benchmark test problems with irregular problems,an analysis of the causes of the irregularity,and real-world optimization problems with irregular Pareto fronts.Then,a taxonomy of the existing methodologies for handling irregular problems is given and representative algorithms are reviewed with a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses.Finally,open challenges are pointed out and a few promising future directions are suggested.

CHARACTERIZATION OF EFFICIENT SOLUTIONS FOR MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS INVOLVING SEMI-STRONG AND GENERALIZED SEMI-STRONG E-CONVEXITY

The authors of this article are interested in characterization of efficient solutions for special classes of problems. These classes consider semi-strong E-convexity of involved functions. Sufficient and necessary conditions for a feasible solution to be an efficient or properly efficient solution are obtained.

A multi-objective optimization framework for ill-posed inverse problems

Many image inverse problems are ill-posed for no unique solutions. Most of them have incommensurable or mixed-type objectives. In this study, a multi-objective optimization framework is introduced to model such ill-posed inverse problems. The conflicting objectives are designed according to the properties of ill-posedness and certain techniques. Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have capability to optimize multiple objectives simultaneously and obtain a set of trade-off solutions. For that reason, we use multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to keep the trade-off between these objectives for image ill-posed problems. Two case studies of sparse reconstruction and change detection are imple- mented. In the case study of sparse reconstruction, the measurement error term and the sparsity term are optimized by multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, which aims at balancing the trade-off between enforcing sparsity and reducing measurement error. In the case study of image change detection, two conflicting objectives are constructed to keep the trade-off between robustness to noise and preserving the image details. Experimental results of the two case studies confirm the multi-objective optimization framework for ill-posed inverse problems in image processing is effective.

Solving material distribution routing problem in mixed manufacturing systems with a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary algorithm

The material distribution routing problem in the manufacturing system is a complex combinatorial optimization problem and its main task is to deliver materials to the working stations with low cost and high efficiency. A multi-objective model was presented for the material distribution routing problem in mixed manufacturing systems, and it was solved by a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (HMOEA). The characteristics of the HMOEA are as follows: 1) A route pool is employed to preserve the best routes for the population initiation; 2) A specialized best?worst route crossover (BWRC) mode is designed to perform the crossover operators for selecting the best route from Chromosomes 1 to exchange with the worst one in Chromosomes 2, so that the better genes are inherited to the offspring; 3) A route swap mode is used to perform the mutation for improving the convergence speed and preserving the better gene; 4) Local heuristics search methods are applied in this algorithm. Computational study of a practical case shows that the proposed algorithm can decrease the total travel distance by 51.66%, enhance the average vehicle load rate by 37.85%, cut down 15 routes and reduce a deliver vehicle. The convergence speed of HMOEA is faster than that of famous NSGA-II.

A Multi-Objective Optimal Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Tree-Ranking

Multi-objective optimal evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are a kind of new effective algorithms to solve Multi-objective optimal problem (MOP). Because ranking, a method which is used by most MOEAs to solve MOP, has some shortcoming s, in this paper, we proposed a new method using tree structure to express the relationship of solutions. Experiments prove that the method can reach the Pare-to front, retain the diversity of the population, and use less time.

Time variant multi-objective linear fractional interval-valued transportation problem

This paper studies a time-variant multi-objective linear fractional transportation problem. In reality, transported goods should reach in destinations within a specific time. Considering the importance of time, a time-variant multi-objective linear fractional transportation problem is formulated here. We take into account the parameters as cost, supply and demand are interval valued that involved in the proposed model, so we treat the model as a multi-objective linear fractional interval transportation problem. To solve the formulated model, we first convert it into a deterministic form using a new transformation technique and then apply fuzzy programming to solve it. The applicability of our proposed method is shown by considering two numerical examples. At last, conclusions and future research directions regarding our study is included.

Novel electromagnetism-like mechanism method for multiobjective optimization problems

As a new-style stochastic algorithm, the electromagnetism-like mechanism（EM） method gains more and more attention from many researchers in recent years. A novel model based on EM（NMEM） for multiobjective optimization problems is proposed, which regards the charge of all particles as the constraints in the current population and the measure of the uniformity of non-dominated solutions as the objective function. The charge of the particle is evaluated based on the dominated concept, and its magnitude determines the direction of a force between two particles. Numerical studies are carried out on six complex test functions and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed NMEM algorithm is a very robust method for solving the multiobjective optimization problems.

A new evolutionary algorithm for constrained optimization problems

To solve single-objective constrained optimization problems,a new population-based evolutionary algorithm with elite strategy(PEAES) is proposed with the concept of single and multi-objective optimization.Constrained functions are combined to be an objective function.During the evolutionary process,the current optimal solution is found and treated as the reference point to divide the population into three sub-populations:one feasible and two infeasible ones.Different evolutionary operations of single or multi-objective optimization are respectively performed in each sub-population with elite strategy.Thirteen famous benchmark functions are selected to evaluate the performance of PEAES in comparison of other three optimization methods.The results show the proposed method is valid in efficiency,precision and probability for solving single-objective constrained optimization problems.

A Parallel Search System for Dynamic Multi-Objective Traveling Salesman Problem

This paper introduces a parallel search system for dynamic multi-objective traveling salesman problem. We design a multi-objective TSP in a stochastic dynamic environment. This dynamic setting of the problem is very useful for routing in ad-hoc networks. The proposed search system first uses parallel processors to identify the extreme solutions of the search space for each ofk objectives individually at the same time. These solutions are merged into the so-called hit-frequency matrix E. The solutions in E are then searched by parallel processors and evaluated for dominance relationship. The search system is implemented in two different ways master-worker architecture and pipeline architecture.

A Multi-Objective Scheduling and Routing Problem for Home Health Care Services via Brain Storm Optimization

At present,home health care(HHC)has been accepted as an effective method for handling the healthcare problems of the elderly.The HHC scheduling and routing problem(HHCSRP)attracts wide concentration from academia and industrial communities.This work proposes an HHCSRP considering several care centers,where a group of customers(i.e.,patients and the elderly)require being assigned to care centers.Then,various kinds of services are provided by caregivers for customers in different regions.By considering the skill matching,customers’appointment time,and caregivers’workload balancing,this article formulates an optimization model with multiple objectives to achieve minimal service cost and minimal delay cost.To handle it,we then introduce a brain storm optimization method with particular multi-objective search mechanisms(MOBSO)via combining with the features of the investigated HHCSRP.Moreover,we perform experiments to test the effectiveness of the designed method.Via comparing the MOBSO with two excellent optimizers,the results confirm that the developed method has significant superiority in addressing the considered HHCSRP.

Non-dominated Sorting Advanced Butterfly Optimization Algorithm for Multi-objective Problems

This paper uses the Butterfly Optimization Algorithm(BOA)with dominated sorting and crowding distance mechanisms to solve multi-objective optimization problems.There is also an improvement to the original version of BOA to alleviate its drawbacks before extending it into a multi-objective version.Due to better coverage and a well-distributed Pareto front,non-dominant rankings are applied to the modified BOA using the crowding distance strategy.Seven benchmark functions and eight real-world problems have been used to test the performance of multi-objective non-dominated advanced BOA(MONSBOA),including unconstrained,constrained,and real-world design multiple-objective,highly nonlinear constraint problems.Various performance metrics,such as Generational Distance(GD),Inverted Generational Distance(IGD),Maximum Spread(MS),and Spacing(S),have been used for performance comparison.It is demonstrated that the new MONSBOA algorithm is better than the compared algorithms in more than 80%occasions in solving problems with a variety of linear,nonlinear,continuous,and discrete characteristics based on the Pareto front when compared quantitatively.From all the analysis,it may be concluded that the suggested MONSBOA is capable of producing high-quality Pareto fronts with very competitive results with rapid convergence.

Solving Multi-Area Environmental/Economic Dispatch by Pareto-Based Chemical-Reaction Optimization Algorithm

In this study, we present a Pareto-based chemicalreaction optimization(PCRO) algorithm for solving the multiarea environmental/economic dispatch optimization problems.Two objectives are minimized simultaneously, i.e., total fuel cost and emission. In the proposed algorithm, each solution is represented by a chemical molecule. A novel encoding mechanism for solving the multi-area environmental/economic dispatch optimization problems is designed to dynamically enhance the performance of the proposed algorithm. Then, an ensemble of effective neighborhood approaches is developed, and a selfadaptive neighborhood structure selection mechanism is also embedded in PCRO to increase the search ability while maintaining population diversity. In addition, a grid-based crowding distance strategy is introduced, which can obviously enable the algorithm to easily converge near the Pareto front. Furthermore,a kinetic-energy-based search procedure is developed to enhance the global search ability. Finally, the proposed algorithm is tested on sets of the instances that are generated based on realistic production. Through the analysis of experimental results, the highly effective performance of the proposed PCRO algorithm is favorably compared with several algorithms, with regards to both solution quality and diversity.

Multi-objective optimization for the multi-mode finance-based project scheduling problem

The finance-based scheduling problem(FBSP)is about scheduling project activities without exceeding a credit line financing limit.The FBSP is extended to consider different execution modes that result in the multi-mode FBSP(MMFBSP).Unfortunately,researchers have abandoned the development of exact models to solve the FBSP and its extensions.Instead,researchers have heavily relied on the use of heuristics and meta-heuristics,which do not guarantee solution optimality.No exact models are available for contractors who look for optimal solutions to the multi-objective MMFBSP.CPLEX,which is an exact solver,has witnessed a significant decrease in its computation time.Moreover,its current version,CPLEX 12.9,solves multi-objective optimization problems.This study presents a mixed-integer linear programming model for the multi-objective MMFBSP.Using CPLEX 12.9,we discuss several techniques that researchers can use to optimize a multi-objective MMFBSP.We test our model by solving several problems from the literature.We also show how to solve multi-objective optimization problems by using CPLEX 12.9 and how computation time increases as problem size increases.The small increase in computation time compared with possible cost savings make exact models a must for practitioners.Moreover,the linear programming-relaxation of the model,which takes seconds,can provide an excellent lower bound.

Optimization of Multi-Project Multi-Site Location Based on MOPSOs

Multi-project multi-site location problems are multi-objective combinational optimization ones with discrete variables which are hard to solve. To do so, the case of particle swarm optimization is considered due to its useful char- acteristics such as easy implantation, simple parameter settings and fast convergence. First these problems are trans- formed into ones with continuous variables by defining an equivalent probability matrix in this paper, then multi-objective particle swarm optimization based on the minimal particle angle is used to solve them. Methods such as continuation of discrete variables, update of particles for matrix variables, normalization of particle position and evalua- tion of particle fitness are presented. Finally the efficiency of the proposed method is validated by comparing it with other methods on an eight-project-ten-site location problem.

Method of Searching for Earthquake Disaster Evacuation Routes Using Multi-Objective GA and GIS

This study treats the determination of routes for evacuation on foot in earthquake disasters as a multi-objective optimization problem, and aims to propose a method for quantitatively searching for evacuation routes using a multi-objective genetic algorithm (multi-objective GA) and GIS. The conclusions can be summarized in the following three points. 1) A GA was used to design and create an evacuation route search algorithm which solves the problem of the optimization of earthquake disaster evacuation routes by treating it as an optimization problem with multiple objectives, such as evacuation distance and evacuation time. 2) In this method, goodness of fit is set by using a Pareto ranking method to determine the ranking of individuals based on their relative superiorities and inferiorities. 3) In this method, searching for evacuation routes based on the information on present conditions allows evacuation routes to be derived based on present building and road locations.?Further, this method is based on publicly available information;therefore, obtaining geographic information similar to that of this study enables this method to be effective regardless of what region it is applied to, or whether the data regards the past or the future. Therefore, this method has high degree of spatial and temporal reproducibility.

3D Path Planning of the Solar Powered UAV in the Urban-Mountainous Environment with Multi-Objective and Multi-Constraint Based on the Enhanced Sparrow Search Algorithm Incorporating the Levy Flight Strategy

In response to practical application challenges in utilizing solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)for remote sensing,this study presents a three-dimensional path planning method tailored for urban-mountainous environment.Taking into account constraints related to the solar-powered UAV,terrain,and mission objectives,a multi-objective trajectory optimization model is transferred into a single-objective optimization problem with weight factors and multiconstraint and is developed with a focus on three key indicators:minimizing trajectory length,maximizing energy flow e±ciency,and minimizing regional risk levels.Additionally,an enhanced sparrow search algorithm incorporating the Levy flight strategy(SSA-Levy)is introduced to address trajectory planning challenges in such complex environments.Through simulation,the proposed algorithm is compared with particle swarm optimization(PSO)and the regular sparrow search algorithm(SSA)across 17 standard test functions and a simplified simulation of urban-mountainous environments.The results of the simulation demonstrate the superior effectiveness of the designed improved SSA based on the Levy flight strategy for solving the established single-objective trajectory optimization model.