04081 Abstracts Collection -- Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms

From 15.02.04 to 20.02.04, the Dagstuhl Seminar 04081 ``Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

A Neuroevolutionary Approach to Stochastic Inventory Control in Multi-Echelon Systems

Stochastic inventory control in multi-echelon systems poses hard problems in optimisation under uncertainty. Stochastic programming can solve small instances optimally, and approximately solve larger instances via scenario reduction techniques, but it cannot handle arbitrary nonlinear constraints or other non-standard features. Simulation optimisation is an alternative approach that has recently been applied to such problems, using policies that require only a few decision variables to be determined. However, to find optimal or near-optimal solutions we must consider exponentially large scenario trees with a corresponding number of decision variables. We propose instead a neuroevolutionary approach: using an artificial neural network to compactly represent the scenario tree, and training the network by a simulation-based evolutionary algorithm. We show experimentally that this method can quickly find high-quality plans using networks of a very simple form

An Artificial Immune System-Inspired Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm with Application to the Detection of Distributed Computer Network Intrusions

Today\u27s predominantly-employed signature-based intrusion detection systems are reactive in nature and storage-limited. Their operation depends upon catching an instance of an intrusion or virus after a potentially successful attack, performing post-mortem analysis on that instance and encoding it into a signature that is stored in its anomaly database. The time required to perform these tasks provides a window of vulnerability to DoD computer systems. Further, because of the current maximum size of an Internet Protocol-based message, the database would have to be able to maintain 25665535 possible signature combinations. In order to tighten this response cycle within storage constraints, this thesis presents an Artificial Immune System-inspired Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm intended to measure the vector of trade-off solutions among detectors with regard to two independent objectives: best classification fitness and optimal hypervolume size. Modeled in the spirit of the human biological immune system and intended to augment DoD network defense systems, our algorithm generates network traffic detectors that are dispersed throughout the network. These detectors promiscuously monitor network traffic for exact and variant abnormal system events, based on only the detector\u27s own data structure and the ID domain truth set, and respond heuristically. The application domain employed for testing was the MIT-DARPA 1999 intrusion detection data set, composed of 7.2 million packets of notional Air Force Base network traffic. Results show our proof-of-concept algorithm correctly classifies at best 86.48% of the normal and 99.9% of the abnormal events, attributed to a detector affinity threshold typically between 39-44%. Further, four of the 16 intrusion sequences were classified with a 0% false positive rate

Identifying Self-excited Vibrations with Evolutionary Computing

AbstractThis study uses differential evolution to identify the coeffic ients of second-order differentia l equations of self-e xc ited vibrations fro m a time signal. The motivation is found in the ample occurrence of this vibration type in engineering and physics, in particu lar in the real -life proble m of v ibrations of hydraulic structure gates. In the proposed method, an equation structure is assumed at the level of the ordinary differentia l equation and a population of candidate coefficient vectors undergoes evolutionary training. In this way the numerical constants of non-linear terms of various self-e xc ited vibration types were recovered fro m the time signal and the velocity value only at the initial t ime. Co mparisons are given regarding accuracy and computing time. Dependency of the test errors on the algorith m para meters is studied in a sensitivity analysis. The presented evolutionary method shows good promise for future applicat ion in engineering systems, in particular operational early -wa rning systems that recognise oscillations with negative damping before they can cause damage

An Artificial Immune System-Inspired Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm with Application to the Detection of Distributed Computer Network Intrusions

Today\u27s signature-based intrusion detection systems are reactive in nature and storage-limited. Their operation depends upon catching an instance of an intrusion or virus and encoding it into a signature that is stored in its anomaly database, providing a window of vulnerability to computer systems during this time. Further, the maximum size of an Internet Protocol-based message requires the database to be huge in order to maintain possible signature combinations. In order to tighten this response cycle within storage constraints, this paper presents an innovative Artificial Immune System-inspired Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm. This distributed intrusion detection system (IDS) is intended to measure the vector of tradeoff solutions among detectors with regard to two independent objectives: best classification fitness and optimal hypervolume size. Our antibody detectors promiscuously monitor network traffic for exact and variant abnormal system events based on only the detector\u27s own data structure and the application domain truth set, responding heuristically. Applied to the MIT-DARPA 1999 insider intrusion detection data set, our software engineered algorithm correctly classifies normal and abnormal events at a high level which is directly attributed to a detector affinity threshold

Path Planning for Single Unmanned Aerial Vehicle by Separately Evolving Waypoints

Evolutionary algorithm-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planners have been extensively studied for their effectiveness and flexibility. However, they still suffer from a drawback that the high-quality waypoints in previous candidate paths can hardly be exploited for further evolution, since they regard all the waypoints of a path as an integrated individual. Due to this drawback, the previous planners usually fail when encountering lots of obstacles. In this paper, a new idea of separately evaluating and evolving waypoints is presented to solve this problem. Concretely, the original objective and constraint functions of UAVs path planning are decomposed into a set of new evaluation functions, with which waypoints on a path can be evaluated separately. The new evaluation functions allow waypoints on a path to be evolved separately and, thus, high-quality waypoints can be better exploited. On this basis, the waypoints are encoded in a rotated coordinate system with an external restriction and evolved with JADE, a state-of-the-art variant of the differential evolution algorithm. To test the capabilities of the new planner on planning obstacle-free paths, five scenarios with increasing numbers of obstacles are constructed. Three existing planners and four variants of the proposed planner are compared to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed planner. The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed planner and the idea of separate evolution