A simplified binary artificial fish swarm algorithm for uncapacitated facility location problems

Uncapacitated facility location problem (UFLP) is a combinatorial optimization problem, which has many applications. The artificial fish swarm algorithm has recently emerged in continuous optimization problem. In this paper, we present a simplified binary version of the artificial fish swarm algorithm (S-bAFSA) for solving the UFLP. In S-bAFSA, trial points are created by using crossover and mutation. In order to improve the quality of the solutions, a cyclic reinitialization of the population is carried out. To enhance the accuracy of the solution, a local search is applied on a predefined number of points. The presented algorithm is tested on a set of benchmark uncapacitated facility location problems.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Adaptive binary artificial bee colony algorithm

Metaheuristics and swarm intelligence algorithms are bio-inspired algorithms, which have long standing track record of success in problem solving. Due to the nature and the complexity of the problems, problem solving approaches may not achieve the same success level in every type of problems. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is a swarm intelligence algorithm and has originally been developed to solve numerical optimisation problems. It has a sound track record in numerical problems, but has not yet been tested sufficiently for combinatorial and binary problems. This paper proposes an adaptive hybrid approach to devise ABC algorithms with multiple and complementary binary operators for higher efficiency in solving binary problems.} Three prominent operator selection schemes have been comparatively investigated for the best configuration in this regard. The proposed approach has been applied to uncapacitated facility location problems, a renown NP-Hard combinatorial problem type modelled with 0-1 programming, and successfully solved the well-known benchmarks outperforming state-of-art algorithms

Meta-Heuristics for Dynamic Lot Sizing: a review and comparison of solution approaches

Proofs from complexity theory as well as computational experiments indicate that most lot sizing problems are hard to solve. Because these problems are so difficult, various solution techniques have been proposed to solve them. In the past decade, meta-heuristics such as tabu search, genetic algorithms and simulated annealing, have become popular and efficient tools for solving hard combinational optimization problems. We review the various meta-heuristics that have been specifically developed to solve lot sizing problems, discussing their main components such as representation, evaluation neighborhood definition and genetic operators. Further, we briefly review other solution approaches, such as dynamic programming, cutting planes, Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition, Lagrange relaxation and dedicated heuristics. This allows us to compare these techniques. Understanding their respective advantages and disadvantages gives insight into how we can integrate elements from several solution approaches into more powerful hybrid algorithms. Finally, we discuss general guidelines for computational experiments and illustrate these with several examples

Dynamic temporary blood facility location-allocation during and post-disaster periods

The key objective of this study is to develop a tool (hybridization or integration of different techniques) for locating the temporary blood banks during and post-disaster conditions that could serve the hospitals with minimum response time. We have used temporary blood centers, which must be located in such a way that it is able to serve the demand of hospitals in nearby region within a shorter duration. We are locating the temporary blood centres for which we are minimizing the maximum distance with hospitals. We have used Tabu search heuristic method to calculate the optimal number of temporary blood centres considering cost components. In addition, we employ Bayesian belief network to prioritize the factors for locating the temporary blood facilities. Workability of our model and methodology is illustrated using a case study including blood centres and hospitals surrounding Jamshedpur city. Our results shows that at-least 6 temporary blood facilities are required to satisfy the demand of blood during and post-disaster periods in Jamshedpur. The results also show that that past disaster conditions, response time and convenience for access are the most important factors for locating the temporary blood facilities during and post-disaster periods

A comprehensive survey on cultural algorithms

Peer reviewedPostprin

Hybrid artificial bee colony and flower pollination algorithm for grid-based optimal pathfinding

Pathfinding is essential and necessary for agent movement used in computer games and many other applications. Generally, the pathfinding algorithm searches the feasible shortest path from start to end locations. This task is computationally expensive and consumes large memory, particularly in a large map size. Obstacle avoidance in the game environment increases the complexity to find a new path in the search space. A huge number of algorithms, including heuristic and metaheuristics approaches, have been proposed to overcome the pathfinding problem. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) is a metaheuristic algorithm that is robust, has fast convergence, high flexibility, and fewer control parameters. However, the best solution founded by the onlooker bee in the presence of constraints is still insufficient and not always satisfactory. A number of variant ABC algorithms have been proposed to achieve the optimal solution. However, it is difficult to simultaneously achieve the optimal solution. Alternatively, Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) is one of promising algorithms in optimising problems. The algorithm is easier to implement and faster to reach an optimum solution. Thus, this research proposed Artificial Bee Colony – Flower Pollination Algorithm to solve the pathfinding problem in games, in terms of path cost, computing time, and memory. The result showed that ABC-FPA improved the path cost result by 81.68% and reduced time by 97.84% as compared to the ABC algorithm, which led to a better pathfinding result. This performance indicated that ABC-FPA pathfinding gave better quality pathfinding results

Heuristic-based firefly algorithm for bound constrained nonlinear binary optimization

Firefly algorithm (FA) is a metaheuristic for global optimization. In this paper,we address the practical testing of aheuristic-based FA (HBFA) for computing optimaof discrete nonlinear optimization problems,where the discrete variables are of binary type. An important issue in FA is the formulation of attractiveness of each firefly which in turn affects its movement in the search space. Dynamic updating schemes are proposed for two parameters, one from the attractiveness term and the other from the randomization term. Three simple heuristics capable of transforming real continuous variables into binary ones are analyzed. A new sigmoid ‘erf’ function is proposed. In the context of FA, three different implementations to incorporate the heuristics for binary variables into the algorithm are proposed. Based on a set of benchmark problems, a comparison is carried out with other binary dealing metaheuristics. The results demonstrate that the proposed HBFA is efficient and outperforms binary versions of differential evolution (DE) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The HBFA also compares very favorably with angle modulated version of DE and PSO. It is shown that the variant of HBFA based on the sigmoid ‘erf’ function with ‘movements in continuous space’ is the best, both in terms of computational requirements and accuracy.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT