Metaheuristics, such as evolutionary algorithms or simulated annealing,are widely applicable heuristic optimization strategies that have shownencouraging results for a large number of diffcult optimization problems.To show high performance, metaheuristics need to be adapted to theproperties of...

The edge-set encoding is a direct tree encoding which applies search oper-ators directly to trees represented as sets of edges. There are two variantsof crossover operators for the edge-set encoding: With heuristics that con-sider the weights of the edges, or without heuristics. Due to a strong...

This paper presents an investigation into the properties of the optimal communication spanningtree (OCST) problem. The OCST problem nds a spanning tree that connects all nodesand satises their communication requirements for a minimum total cost. The paper comparesthe properties of randomly...

Vorliegendes Arbeitspapier beschreibt den entsprechenden Einsatz künstlicher Ameisen und diskutiert erste numerische Ergebnisse.

In this paper we propose a multi-colony Ant System, where the colonies solve a multi-objective optimization problem concerned with goods transportation.

Ant Colony Optimization is a relatively new meta-heuristic that has proven its quality and versatility on various combinatorial optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem, the vehicle routing problem and the job shop scheduling problem.(...)

The ant system is a new meta-heuristic for hard combinatorial optimization problems. It is a population-based approach that uses exploitation of positive feedback as well as greedy search. It was first proposed for tackling the well known Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), but has been also...

The paper shows how a particular optimization heuristic, called threshold accepting, can be successfully used to solve complex portfolio choice problems.

We study a number of large international military conflicts sinceWorld War II where we establish a news analysis as a proxy for theestimated likelihood that the conflict will result in a war. We findthat in cases when there is a pre-war phase, an increase in the warlikelihood tends to decrease...

This paper introduces a bi-objective winner determination problem which arises in the procurement oftransportation contracts via combinatorial auctions. The problem is modelled as an extension to the setcovering problem and considers the minimisation of the total procurement costs and the...