Evolutionary framework with reinforcement learning-based mutation adaptation

Although several multi-operator and multi-method approaches for solving optimization problems have been proposed, their performances are not consistent for a wide range of optimization problems. Also, the task of ensuring the appropriate selection of algorithms and operators may be inefficient since their designs are undertaken mainly through trial and error. This research proposes an improved optimization framework that uses the benefits of multiple algorithms, namely, a multi-operator differential evolution algorithm and a co-variance matrix adaptation evolution strategy. In the former, reinforcement learning is used to automatically choose the best differential evolution operator. To judge the performance of the proposed framework, three benchmark sets of bound-constrained optimization problems (73 problems) with 10, 30 and 50 dimensions are solved. Further, the proposed algorithm has been tested by solving optimization problems with 100 dimensions taken from CEC2014 and CEC2017 benchmark problems. A real-world application data set has also been solved. Several experiments are designed to analyze the effects of different components of the proposed framework, with the best variant compared with a number of state-of-the-art algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to outperform all the others considered.</p

Deep-IFS:Intrusion Detection Approach for Industrial Internet of Things Traffic in Fog Environment

The extensive propagation of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies has encouraged intruders to initiate a variety of attacks that need to be identified to maintain the security of end-user data and the safety of services offered by service providers. Deep learning (DL), especially recurrent approaches, has been applied successfully to the analysis of IIoT forensics but their key challenge of recurrent DL models is that they struggle with long traffic sequences and cannot be parallelized. Multihead attention (MHA) tried to address this shortfall but failed to capture the local representation of IIoT traffic sequences. In this article, we propose a forensics-based DL model (called Deep-IFS) to identify intrusions in IIoT traffic. The model learns local representations using local gated recurrent unit (LocalGRU), and introduces an MHA layer to capture and learn global representation (i.e., long-range dependencies). A residual connection between layers is designed to prevent information loss. Another challenge facing the current IIoT forensics frameworks is their limited scalability, limiting performance in handling Big IIoT traffic data produced by IIoT devices. This challenge is addressed by deploying and training the proposed Deep-IFS in a fog computing environment. The intrusion identification becomes scalable by distributing the computation and the IIoT traffic data across worker fog nodes for training the model. The master fog node is responsible for sharing training parameters and aggregating worker node output. The aggregated classification output is subsequently passed to the cloud platform for mitigating attacks. Empirical results on the Bot-IIoT dataset demonstrate that the developed distributed Deep-IFS can effectively handle Big IIoT traffic data compared with the present centralized DL-based forensics techniques. Further, the results validate the robustness of the proposed Deep-IFS across various evaluation measures

FSS-2019-nCov:A deep learning architecture for semi-supervised few-shot segmentation of COVID-19 infection

The newly discovered coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia is providing major challenges to research in terms of diagnosis and disease quantification. Deep-learning (DL) techniques allow extremely precise image segmentation; yet, they necessitate huge volumes of manually labeled data to be trained in a supervised manner. Few-Shot Learning (FSL) paradigms tackle this issue by learning a novel category from a small number of annotated instances. We present an innovative semi-supervised few-shot segmentation (FSS) approach for efficient segmentation of 2019-nCov infection (FSS-2019-nCov) from only a few amounts of annotated lung CT scans. The key challenge of this study is to provide accurate segmentation of COVID-19 infection from a limited number of annotated instances. For that purpose, we propose a novel dual-path deep-learning architecture for FSS. Every path contains encoder–decoder (E-D) architecture to extract high-level information while maintaining the channel information of COVID-19 CT slices. The E-D architecture primarily consists of three main modules: a feature encoder module, a context enrichment (CE) module, and a feature decoder module. We utilize the pre-trained ResNet34 as an encoder backbone for feature extraction. The CE module is designated by a newly introduced proposed Smoothed Atrous Convolution (SAC) block and Multi-scale Pyramid Pooling (MPP) block. The conditioner path takes the pairs of CT images and their labels as input and produces a relevant knowledge representation that is transferred to the segmentation path to be used to segment the new images. To enable effective collaboration between both paths, we propose an adaptive recombination and recalibration (RR) module that permits intensive knowledge exchange between paths with a trivial increase in computational complexity. The model is extended to multi-class labeling for various types of lung infections. This contribution overcomes the limitation of the lack of large numbers of COVID-19 CT scans. It also provides a general framework for lung disease diagnosis in limited data situations

An optimal ambulance routing model using simulation based on patient medical severity

Ambulance routing is an important strategic decision that plays a critical role in the optimisation of the healthcare system. Despite the obvious merit of intelligent ambulance routing strategy, there needs to be more work in the existing literature, which has been identified through a comprehensive review. Deciding the optimal path while transporting patients is a dynamic process, which the time-critical and emergency level of the patient can further exacerbate. Therefore, this research has designed a simulation model to plot the optimal path by considering multiple ambulances, dispatching locations, and hospitals. Real data from the Australian Government (focus: Victoria, Melbourne) has been used for hospital admissions across Australian states and territories to ensure the scope is manageable. Different patient medical severities have been considered while simulating the optimal ambulance routing. The simulation achieved an average Code 1 arrival time of 15 min across all three Victorian Local Government Areas (LGAs). It also performed well when the model’s parameters were restricted. These results are very promising and provide the foundation for further research

The implications of blockchain-coordinated information sharing within a supply chain: A simulation study

The profitability of a supply chain (SC) is proportional to the stability of all its stakeholders as well as their consistent information sharing with an effective and efficient communication mechanism. Various inefficiencies, such as the bullwhip effect (BWE) and product unavailability, may be caused by a lack of coordination in an SC. The importance of sharing consumer demand has been quantified by comprehensive studies under the assumption that all SC participants will access the same information. However, only a few studies have studied the effect of minimal coordination or limited visibility of information while considering their effect on the overall efficiency of an SC. This work primarily leverages blockchain technology (BCT) to create a simulation model. To do this, an SC BWE-based model is initially developed. Following that, a blockchain-based robust information sharing system is simulated. Furthermore, information sharing is challenging, and SC stakeholders may not really trust each other and hence be reluctant to share sensitive information. Considering that, this paper propose an improved proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus algorithm that will increase trust in a decentralized SC model. Multiple experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, and the simulation results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of information sharing in a supply chain via blockchain, as well as that trust between partners tends to increase overall SC efficiency and reduce BWE

A two-stage multi-operator differential evolution algorithm for solving Resource Constrained Project Scheduling problems

The Resource Constrained Project Scheduling problem (RCPSP) is a complex and combinatorial optimization problem mostly relates with project management, construction industries, production planning and manufacturing domains. Although several solution methods have been proposed, no single method has been shown to be the best. Further, optimal solution of this type of problem requires different requirements of the exploration and exploitation at different stages of the optimization process. Considering these requirements, in this paper, a two-stage multi-operator differential evolution (DE) algorithm, called TS-MODE, has been developed to solve RCPSP. TS-MODE starts with the exploration stage, and based on the diversity of population and the quality of solutions, this approach dynamically place more importance on the most-suitable DE, and then repeats the same process during the exploitation phase. A complete evaluation of the components and parameters of the algorithms by a Design of Experiments technique is also presented. A number of single-mode RCPSP data sets from the project scheduling library (PSPLIB) have been considered to test the effectiveness and performance of the proposed TS-MODE against selected recent well-known state-of-the-art algorithms. Those results reveal the efficiency and competitiveness of the proposed TS-MODE approach