Evolutionary Computation niching methods, such as Fitness Sharing and Crowding, are aimed at simultaneously locating and maintaining multiple optima to increase search robustness, typically in multi-modal function optimization. Such methods have been shown to be useful for both single and multiple objective optimisation problems. Niching methods have been adapted in recent years for other optim...

We compare two heuristic approaches, evolutionary computation and ant colony optimisation, and a complete tree-search approach, constraint programming, for solving binary constraint satisfaction problems. We experimentally show that, if evolutionary computation is far from being able to compete with the two other approaches, ant colony optimisation nearly always succeeds in finding a solution, ...

Water distribution systems (WDSs) are costly infrastructure, and much attention has been given to the application of optimisation methods to minimise design costs. In previous studies, Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) has been found to perform extremely competitively for WDS optimisation. In this paper, five ACO algorithms are tested: one basic algorithm (Ant System) and four more advanced algorit...

This thesis is a critical investigation into the development, application and evaluation of ant colony optimisation metaheuristics, with a view to solving a class of capacitated facility location problems. The study is comprised of three phases. The first sets the scene and motivation for research, which includes; key concepts of ant colony optimisation, a review of published academic materials...

We compare two heuristic approaches, evolutionary computation and ant colony optimisation, and a complete tree-search approach, constraint programming, for solving binary constraint satisfaction problems. We experimentally show that, if evolutionary computation is far from being able to compete with the two other approaches, ant colony optimisation nearly always succeeds in finding a solution, ...

This paper presents a hybrid ant colony optimisation (HACO) algorithm for solving job shop problems. The criterion considered is the maximum completion time, the so-called makespan. The HACO algorithm improves the performance of intelligence optimisation algorithm, which adopts ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm to search in the global solution space, and tabu search (TS) algorithm is util...

due to the considerable growth in the worldwide container transportation, optimization of container terminal operations is becoming highly needed to rationalize the use of logistics resources. for this reason, we focus our study on the quay crane scheduling problem (qcsp), which is a core task of managing maritime container terminals. from this planning problem arise two decisions to be made: t...