Scientific research trends about metaheuristics in process optimization and case study using the desirability function

This study aimed to identify the research gaps in Metaheuristics, taking into account the publications entered in a database in 2015 and to present a case study of a company in the Sul Fluminense region using the Desirability function. To achieve this goal, applied research of exploratory nature and qualitative approach was carried out, as well as another of quantitative nature. As method and technical procedures were the bibliographical research, some literature review, and an adopted case study respectively. As a contribution of this research, the holistic view of opportunities to carry out new investigations on the theme in question is pointed out. It is noteworthy that the identified study gaps after the research were prioritized and discriminated, highlighting the importance of the viability of metaheuristic algorithms, as well as their benefits for process optimization

Stochastic local search: a state-of-the-art review

The main objective of this paper is to provide a state-of-the-art review, analyze and discuss stochastic local search techniques used for solving hard combinatorial problems. It begins with a short introduction, motivation and some basic notation on combinatorial problems, search paradigms and other relevant features of searching techniques as needed for background. In the following a brief overview of the stochastic local search methods along with an analysis of the state-of-the-art stochastic local search algorithms is given. Finally, the last part of the paper present and discuss some of the most latest trends in application of stochastic local search algorithms in machine learning, data mining and some other areas of science and engineering. We conclude with a discussion on capabilities and limitations of stochastic local search algorithms

A New Quadratic Binary Harris Hawk Optimization For Feature Selection

Harris hawk optimization (HHO) is one of the recently proposed metaheuristic algorithms that has proven to be work more effectively in several challenging optimization tasks. However, the original HHO is developed to solve the continuous optimization problems, but not to the problems with binary variables. This paper proposes the binary version of HHO (BHHO) to solve the feature selection problem in classification tasks. The proposed BHHO is equipped with an S-shaped or V-shaped transfer function to convert the continuous variable into a binary one. Moreover, another variant of HHO, namely quadratic binary Harris hawk optimization (QBHHO), is proposed to enhance the performance of BHHO. In this study, twenty-two datasets collected from the UCI machine learning repository are used to validate the performance of proposed algorithms. A comparative study is conducted to compare the effectiveness of QBHHO with other feature selection algorithms such as binary differential evolution (BDE), genetic algorithm (GA), binary multi-verse optimizer (BMVO), binary flower pollination algorithm (BFPA), and binary salp swarm algorithm (BSSA). The experimental results show the superiority of the proposed QBHHO in terms of classification performance, feature size, and fitness values compared to other algorithms

Binary Competitive Swarm Optimizer Approaches For Feature Selection

Feature selection is known as an NP-hard combinatorial problem in which the possible feature subsets increase exponentially with the number of features. Due to the increment of the feature size, the exhaustive search has become impractical. In addition, a feature set normally includes irrelevant, redundant, and relevant information. Therefore, in this paper, binary variants of a competitive swarm optimizer are proposed for wrapper feature selection. The proposed approaches are used to select a subset of significant features for classification purposes. The binary version introduced here is performed by employing the S-shaped and V-shaped transfer functions, which allows the search agents to move on the binary search space. The proposed approaches are tested by using 15 benchmark datasets collected from the UCI machine learning repository, and the results are compared with other conventional feature selection methods. Our results prove the capability of the proposed binary version of the competitive swarm optimizer not only in terms of high classification performance, but also low computational cost

Aco-based feature selection algorithm for classification

Dataset with a small number of records but big number of attributes represents a phenomenon called “curse of dimensionality”. The classification of this type of dataset requires Feature Selection (FS) methods for the extraction of useful information. The modified graph clustering ant colony optimisation (MGCACO) algorithm is an effective FS method that was developed based on grouping the highly correlated features. However, the MGCACO algorithm has three main drawbacks in producing a features subset because of its clustering method, parameter sensitivity, and the final subset determination. An enhanced graph clustering ant colony optimisation (EGCACO) algorithm is proposed to solve the three (3) MGCACO algorithm problems. The proposed improvement includes: (i) an ACO feature clustering method to obtain clusters of highly correlated features; (ii) an adaptive selection technique for subset construction from the clusters of features; and (iii) a genetic-based method for producing the final subset of features. The ACO feature clustering method utilises the ability of various mechanisms such as intensification and diversification for local and global optimisation to provide highly correlated features. The adaptive technique for ant selection enables the parameter to adaptively change based on the feedback of the search space. The genetic method determines the final subset, automatically, based on the crossover and subset quality calculation. The performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated on 18 benchmark datasets from the University California Irvine (UCI) repository and nine (9) deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) microarray datasets against 15 benchmark metaheuristic algorithms. The experimental results of the EGCACO algorithm on the UCI dataset are superior to other benchmark optimisation algorithms in terms of the number of selected features for 16 out of the 18 UCI datasets (88.89%) and the best in eight (8) (44.47%) of the datasets for classification accuracy. Further, experiments on the nine (9) DNA microarray datasets showed that the EGCACO algorithm is superior than the benchmark algorithms in terms of classification accuracy (first rank) for seven (7) datasets (77.78%) and demonstrates the lowest number of selected features in six (6) datasets (66.67%). The proposed EGCACO algorithm can be utilised for FS in DNA microarray classification tasks that involve large dataset size in various application domains

Feature extraction and selection algorithm based on self adaptive ant colony system for sky image classification

Sky image classification is crucial in meteorology to forecast weather and climatic conditions. The fine-grained cloud detection and recognition (FGCDR) algorithm is use to extract colour, inside texture and neighbour texture features from multiview of superpixels sky images. However, the FGCDR produced a substantial amount of redundant and insignificant features. The ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm have been used to select feature subset. However, the ACO suffers from premature convergence which leads to poor feature subset. Therefore, an improved feature extraction and selection for sky image classification (FESSIC) algorithm is proposed. This algorithm consists of (i) Gaussian smoothness standard deviation method that formulates informative features within sky images; (ii) nearest-threshold based technique that converts feature map into a weighted directed graph to represent relationship between features; and (iii) an ant colony system with self-adaptive parameter technique for local pheromone update. The performance of FESSIC was evaluated against ten benchmark image classification algorithms and six classifiers on four ground-based sky image datasets. The Friedman test result is presented for the performance rank of six benchmark feature selection algorithms and FESSIC algorithm. The Man-Whitney U test is then performed to statistically evaluate the significance difference of the second rank and FESSIC algorithms. The experimental results for the proposed algorithm are superior to the benchmark image classification algorithms in terms of similarity value on Kiel, SWIMCAT and MGCD datasets. FESSIC outperforms other algorithms for average classification accuracy for the KSVM, MLP, RF and DT classifiers. The Friedman test has shown that the FESSIC has the first rank for all classifiers. Furthermore, the result of Man-Whitney U test indicates that FESSIC is significantly better than the second rank benchmark algorithm for all classifiers. In conclusion, the FESSIC can be utilised for image classification in various applications such as disaster management, medical diagnosis, industrial inspection, sports management, and content-based image retrieval