Incorporation of Preferences in an Evolutionary Algorithm Using an Outranking Relation: The EvABOR Approach

The incorporation of preferences into Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) presents some relevant advantages, namely to deal with complex real-world problems. It enables focus on the search thus avoiding the computation of irrelevant solutions from the point of view of the practical exploitation of results (thus minimizing the computational effort), and it facilitates the integration of the DM’s expertise into the solution search process (thus minimizing the cognitive effort). These issues are particularly important whenever the number of conflicting objective functions and/or the number of non-dominated solutions in the population is large. In EvABOR (Evolutionary Algorithm Based on an Outranking Relation) approaches preferences are elicited from a decision maker (DM) with the aim of guiding the evolutionary process to the regions of the space more in accordance with the DM’s preferences. The preferences are captured and made operational by using the technical parameters of the ELECTRE TRI method. This approach is presented and analyzed using some illustrative results of a case study of electrical networks. Eunice Oliveira Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal & R&D Unit INESC Coimbra, Portugal Carlos Henggeler Antunes University of Coimbra, Portugal & R&D Unit INESC Coimbra, Portugal Álvaro Gomes University of Coimbra, Portugal & R&D Unit INESC Coimbra, Portugal DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4253-9.ch004