A novel preference articulation operator for the Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimisation of classifiers in concealed weapons detection

Abstract The incorporation of decision maker preferences is often neglected in the Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimisation (EMO) literature. The majority of the research in the field and the development of EMO algorithms is primarily focussed on converging to a Pareto optimal approximation close to or along the true Pareto front of synthetic test problems. However, when EMO is applied to real-world optimisation problems there is often a decision maker who is only interested in a portion of the Pareto front (the Region of Interest) which is defined by their expressed preferences for the problem objectives. In this paper a novel preference articulation operator for EMO algorithms is introduced (named the Weighted Z-score Preference Articulation Operator) with the flexibility of being incorporated a priori, a posteriori or progressively, and as either a primary or auxiliary fitness operator. The Weighted Z-score Preference Articulation Operator is incorporated into an implementation of the Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Decomposition (named WZ-MOEA/D) and benchmarked against MOEA/D-DRA on a number of bi-objective and five-objective test problems with test cases containing preference information. After promising results are obtained when comparing WZ-MOEA/D to MOEA/D-DRA in the presence of decision maker preferences, WZ-MOEA/D is successfully applied to a real-world optimisation problem to optimise a classifier for concealed weapon detection, producing better results than previously published classifier implementations

A multi-tier adaptive grid algorithm for the evolutionary multi-objective optimisation of complex problems

The multi-tier Covariance Matrix Adaptation Pareto Archived Evolution Strategy (m-CMA-PAES) is an evolutionary multi-objective optimisation (EMO) algorithm for real-valued optimisation problems. It combines a non-elitist adaptive grid based selection scheme with the efficient strategy parameter adaptation of the elitist Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES). In the original CMA-PAES, a solution is selected as a parent for the next population using an elitist adaptive grid archiving (AGA) scheme derived from the Pareto Archived Evolution Strategy (PAES). In contrast, a multi-tiered AGA scheme to populate the archive using an adaptive grid for each level of non-dominated solutions in the considered candidate population is proposed. The new selection scheme improves the performance of the CMA-PAES as shown using benchmark functions from the ZDT, CEC09, and DTLZ test suite in a comparison against the (μ+λ) μ λ Multi-Objective Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (MO-CMA-ES). In comparison with MO-CMA-ES, the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm offers up to a 69 % performance increase according to the Inverse Generational Distance (IGD) metric

A comprehensive review of swarm optimization algorithms

Many swarm optimization algorithms have been introduced since the early 60’s, Evolutionary Programming to the most recent, Grey Wolf Optimization. All of these algorithms have demonstrated their potential to solve many optimization problems. This paper provides an in-depth survey of well-known optimization algorithms. Selected algorithms are briefly explained, and compared with each other comprehensively through experiments conducted using thirty well-known benchmark functions. Their advantages and disadvantages are also discussed. A number of statistical tests are then carried out to determine the significant performances. The results indicate the overall advantage of Differential Evolution (DE) and is closely followed by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), compared with other considered approaches

When Evolutionary Computing Meets Astro- and Geoinformatics

International audienceKnowledge discovery from data typically includes solving some type of an optimization problem that can be efficiently addressed using algorithms belonging to the class of evolutionary and bio-inspired computation. In this chapter, we give an overview of the various kinds of evolutionary algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategy, evolutionary and genetic programming, differential evolution, and coevolutionary algorithms, as well as several other bio-inspired approaches, like swarm intelligence and artificial immune systems. After elaborating on the methodology, we provide numerous examples of applications in astronomy and geoscience and show how these algorithms can be applied within a distributed environment, by making use of parallel computing, which is essential when dealing with Big Data

Transforming geocentric cartesian coordinates to geodetic coordinates by using differential search algorithm

In order to solve numerous practical navigational, geodetic and astro-geodetic problems, it is necessary to transform geocentric cartesian coordinates into geodetic coordinates or vice versa. It is very easy to solve the problem of transforming geodetic coordinates into geocentric cartesian coordinates. On the other hand, it is rather difficult to solve the problem of transforming geocentric cartesian coordinates into geodetic coordinates as it is very hard to define a mathematical relationship between the geodetic latitude (phi) and the geocentric cartesian coordinates (X, Y, Z). In this paper, a new algorithm, the Differential Search Algorithm (DS), is presented to solve the problem of transforming the geocentric cartesian coordinates into geodetic coordinates and its performance is compared with the performances of the classical methods (i.e., Borkowski, 1989; Bowring, 1976; Fukushima, 2006; Heikkinen, 1982; Jones, 2002; Zhang, 2005; Borkowski, 1987; Shu, 2010 and Lin, 1995) and Computational-Intelligence algorithms (i.e., ABC, JDE, JADE, SADE, EPSDE, GSA, PSO2011, and CMA-ES). The statistical tests realized for the comparison of performances indicate that the problem-solving success of DS algorithm in transforming the geocentric cartesian coordinates into geodetic coordinates is higher than those of all classical methods and Computational-Intelligence algorithms used in this paper. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Using LM artificial neural networks and eta-closest-pixels for impulsive noise suppression from highly corrupted images

In this paper, a new filter, eta - LM, which is based on Levenberg-Marquardt Artificial Neural Networks, is proposed for the impulsive noise suppression from highly distorted images. The eta - LM uses Anderson-Darling goodness-of-fit test in order to find corrupted pixels more accurately. The extensive simulation results show that the proposed filter achieves a superior performance to the other filters mentioned in this paper in the cases of being effective in detail preservation and noise suppression, especially when the noise density is very high

Backtracking Search Optimization Algorithm for numerical optimization problems

This paper introduces the Backtracking Search Optimization Algorithm (BSA), a new evolutionary algorithm (EA) for solving real-valued numerical optimization problems. EAs are popular stochastic search algorithms that are widely used to solve non-linear, non-differentiable and complex numerical optimization problems. Current research aims at mitigating the effects of problems that are frequently encountered in EAs, such as excessive sensitivity to control parameters, premature convergence and slow computation. In this vein, development of BSA was motivated by studies that attempt to develop simpler and more effective search algorithms. Unlike many search algorithms, BSA has a single control parameter. Moreover, BSA's problem-solving performance is not over sensitive to the initial value of this parameter. BSA has a simple structure that is effective, fast and capable of solving multimodal problems and that enables it to easily adapt to different numerical optimization problems. BSA's strategy for generating a trial population includes two new crossover and mutation operators. BSA's strategies for generating trial populations and controlling the amplitude of the search-direction matrix and search-space boundaries give it very powerful exploration and exploitation capabilities. In particular, BSA possesses a memory in which it stores a population from a randomly chosen previous generation for use in generating the search-direction matrix. Thus, BSA's memory allows it to take advantage of experiences gained from previous generations when it generates a trial preparation. This paper uses the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test to statistically compare BSA's effectiveness in solving numerical optimization problems with the performances of six widely used EA algorithms: PSO, CMAES, ABC, JDE, CLPSO and SADE. The comparison, which uses 75 boundary-constrained benchmark problems and three constrained real-world benchmark problems, shows that in general, BSA can solve the benchmark problems more successfully than the comparison algorithms. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Artificial cooperative search algorithm for numerical optimization problems

In this paper, a new two-population based global search algorithm, the Artificial Cooperative Search Algorithm (ACS), is introduced. ACS algorithm has been developed to be used in solving real-valued numerical optimization problems. For purposes of examining the success of ACS algorithm in solving numerical optimization problems, 91 benchmark problems that have different specifications were used in the detailed tests. The success of ACS algorithm in solving the related benchmark problems was compared to the successes obtained by PSO, SADE, CLPSO, BBO, CMA-ES, CK and DSA algorithms in solving the related benchmark problems by using Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Statistical Test with Bonferroni-Holm correction. The results obtained in the statistical analysis demonstrate that the success achieved by ACS algorithm in solving numerical optimization problems is better in comparison to the other computational intelligence algorithms used in this paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved