Neutrality in the graph coloring problem

In this paper, the neutrality of some hard instances of the graph coloring problem (GCP) is quantified. This neutrality property has to be detected as it impacts the search process. Indeed, local optima may belong to plateaus that represent a barrier for local search methods. Then, we also aim at pointing out the interest of exploiting neutrality during the search. Therefore, a generic local search dedicated to neutral problems, NILS, is performed on several hard instances. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.SCOPUS: cp.kinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe