In this paper we propose a new method called ND-Tree-based update (or shortly
ND-Tree) for the dynamic non-dominance problem, i.e. the problem of online
update of a Pareto archive composed of mutually non-dominated points. It uses a
new ND-Tree data structure in which each node represents a subset of points
contained in a hyperrectangle defined by its local approximate ideal and nadir
points. By building subsets containing points located close in the objective
space and using basic properties of the local ideal and nadir points we can
efficiently avoid searching many branches in the tree. ND-Tree may be used in
multiobjective evolutionary algorithms and other multiobjective metaheuristics
to update an archive of potentially non-dominated points. We prove that the
proposed algorithm has sub-linear time complexity under mild assumptions. We
experimentally compare ND-Tree to the simple list, Quad-tree, and M-Front
methods using artificial and realistic benchmarks with up to 10 objectives and
show that with this new method substantial reduction of the number of point
comparisons and computational time can be obtained. Furthermore, we apply the
method to the non-dominated sorting problem showing that it is highly
competitive to some recently proposed algorithms dedicated to this problem.Comment: 15 pages, 21 figures, 3 table