A MULTI-OBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM USING DECOMPOSITION (MOEA/D) AND ITS APPLICATION IN MULTIPURPOSE MULTI-RESERVOIR OPERATIONS

This paper presents a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm based on Decomposition (MOEA/D) for the optimal operation of a complex multipurpose and multi-reservoir system. Firstly, MOEA/D decomposes a multi-objective optimization problem into a number of scalar optimization sub-problems and optimizes them simultaneously. It uses information of its several neighboring sub-problems for optimizing each sub-problem. This simple procedure makes MOEA/D have lower computational complexity compared with non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II). The algorithm (MOEA/D) is compared with the Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) using a set of common test problems and the real-world Zohre reservoir system in southern Iran. The objectives of the case study include water supply of minimum flow and agriculture demands over a long-term simulation period. Experimental results have demonstrated that MOEA/D can improve system performance to reduce the effect of drought compared with NSGA-II superiority. Therefore, MOEA/D is highly competitive and recommended to solve multi-objective optimization problems for water resources planning and management.