'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'

This paper presents a new type of genetic algorithm for the set covering problem. It differs from previous evolutionary approaches first because it is an indirect algorithm, i.e. the actual solutions are found by an external decoder function. The genetic algorithm itself provides this decoder with p...

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Main Author: Aickelin, Uwe
Format: Article
Published: 2002
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/663/
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author Aickelin, Uwe
author_facet Aickelin, Uwe
author_sort Aickelin, Uwe
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper presents a new type of genetic algorithm for the set covering problem. It differs from previous evolutionary approaches first because it is an indirect algorithm, i.e. the actual solutions are found by an external decoder function. The genetic algorithm itself provides this decoder with permutations of the solution variables and other parameters. Second, it will be shown that results can be further improved by adding another indirect optimisation layer. The decoder will not directly seek out low cost solutions but instead aims for good exploitable solutions. These are then post optimised by another hill-climbing algorithm. Although seemingly more complicated, we will show that this three-stage approach has advantages in terms of solution quality, speed and adaptability to new types of problems over more direct approaches. Extensive computational results are presented and compared to the latest evolutionary and other heuristic approaches to the same data instances.
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spelling nottingham-6632020-05-04T20:32:13Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/663/ 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems' Aickelin, Uwe This paper presents a new type of genetic algorithm for the set covering problem. It differs from previous evolutionary approaches first because it is an indirect algorithm, i.e. the actual solutions are found by an external decoder function. The genetic algorithm itself provides this decoder with permutations of the solution variables and other parameters. Second, it will be shown that results can be further improved by adding another indirect optimisation layer. The decoder will not directly seek out low cost solutions but instead aims for good exploitable solutions. These are then post optimised by another hill-climbing algorithm. Although seemingly more complicated, we will show that this three-stage approach has advantages in terms of solution quality, speed and adaptability to new types of problems over more direct approaches. Extensive computational results are presented and compared to the latest evolutionary and other heuristic approaches to the same data instances. 2002 Article PeerReviewed Aickelin, Uwe (2002) 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 53 (10). pp. 1118-1126. Heuristics Optimisation Scheduling http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v53/n10/pdf/2601317a.pdf doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601317 doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601317
spellingShingle Heuristics
Optimisation
Scheduling
Aickelin, Uwe
'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title_full 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title_fullStr 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title_full_unstemmed 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title_short 'An Indirect Genetic Algorithm for Set Covering Problems'
title_sort 'an indirect genetic algorithm for set covering problems'
topic Heuristics
Optimisation
Scheduling
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/663/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/663/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/663/