Skip to main content
Log in

Fitness Landscape Analysis and Metaheuristics Efficiency

  • Published:
Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms in Operations Research

Abstract

Landscape analysis has been identified as a promising way to develop efficient optimization methods. Nevertheless, the links between properties of the landscape and efficiency of methods is not easy to understand. In this article, we propose to give a contribution in this field using a vehicle routing problem as an illustration. Metaheuristics use a neighborhood operator that connects solutions of the search space. Thus, this operator acts on the dynamics of the search and impacts metaheuristics efficiency. Therefore, we characterize two landscapes differenciated by their neighborhood function and then, we analyze the performance of classical metaheuristics using one or the other neighborhood operator. Finally, a discussion provides insights on the relations between results of the landscape analysis and results of methods performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bachelet, V., Preux, P., Talbi, E.G.: The landscape of the quadratic assignment problem and local search methods. In: Tenth meeting of the European Chapter on Combinatorial Optimization (1997)

  2. Beasley, J.: Route-first cluster-second methods for vehicle routing. Omega 11, 403–408 (1983)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Cahon, S., Melab, N., Talbi, E.G.: Paradiseo: a framework for the reusable design of parallel and distributed metaheuristics. Journal of Heuristics 10(3), 357–380 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Collard, P., Verel, S., Clergue, M.: How to use the scuba diving metaphor to solve problem with neutrality? In: de Mantaras, R.L., Saitta, L. (eds.) ECAI’2004 ECAI’2004, pp. 166–170. IOS Press, Valencia Espagne. http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00160051/en/ (2004)

  5. Fischetti, M., Toth, P., Vigo, D.: A branch and bound algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem on directed graphs. Oper. Res. 42, 846–859 (1994)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Glover, F., Laguna, M.: Tabu Search. Kluwer Academic Publishers (1998)

  7. Grefenstette, J.J.: Incorporating problem specific knowledge into genetic algorithms. Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. (1987)

  8. Kubiak, M.: Distance measures and fitness-distance analysis for the capacitated vehicle routing problem. In: Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series, vol. 39, chap. 18, pp. 345–364. Springer US (2007)

  9. Laporte, G., Mercure, H., Nobert, Y.: An exact algorithm for the asymmetrical capacitated vehicle routing problem. Networks 16, 33–46 (1986)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Levenshtein, V.: Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions and reversals. Sov. Phys. Dokl. 10, 707–710 (1966)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. Marmion, M.E., Dhaenens, C., Jourdan, L.: A new distance measure based on the exchange operator for the HFF-AVRP. Interne RR-7263, INRIA. http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00475710/en/ (2010)

  12. Marmion, M.E., Dhaenens, C., Jourdan, L., Liefooghe, A., Verel, S.: On the neutrality of flowshop scheduling fitness landscapes. In: Learning and Intelligent Optimization (LION 5), LNCS. Springer (2011)

  13. Marmion, M.E., Dhaenens, C., Jourdan, L., Liefooghe, A., Verel, S.: NILS: a neutrality-based iterated local search and its application to flowshop scheduling. In: Proceedings of the 12th European Conference of Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization, EvoCOP 2011, pp. 191– 202. LNCS, Springer (2011)

  14. Merz, P.: Memetic algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems: fitness landscapes and effective search strategies. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Siegen, Germany (2000)

  15. Michalewicz, Z., Fogel, D.B.: How to Solve it: Modern Heuristics. Springer (2000)

  16. Mitchell, M., Forrest, S., Holland, J.H.: The royal road for genetic algorithms: fitness landscapes and ga performance. In: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life, pp. 245–254. MIT Press (1991)

  17. Schiavinotto, T., Stützle, T.: A review of metrics on permutations for search landscape analysis. Comput. Oper. Res. 34, 3143–3153 (2007)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. Stadler, P.F.: Towards a Theory of Landscapes, vol. 461, pp. 78–163. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg (1995)

  19. Toth, P., Vigo, D.: An Overview of Vehicle Routing Problems, pp. 1–26. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, PA, USA (2001)

  20. Verel, S., Ochoa, G., Tomassini, M.: Local optima networks of nk landscapes with neutrality. Evol. Comput. PP(99), 1 (2011). doi:10.1109/TEVC.2010.2046175

    Google Scholar 

  21. Weinberger, E.: Correlated and uncorrelated fitness landscapes and how to tell the difference. Biol. Cybern. 63, 325–336 (1990)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Wright, S.: The roles of mutation, inbreeding, crossbreeding and selection in evolution. In: Jones, D. (ed.) Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Genetics, vol. 1 (1932)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marie-Éléonore Marmion.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Marmion, MÉ., Jourdan, L. & Dhaenens, C. Fitness Landscape Analysis and Metaheuristics Efficiency. J Math Model Algor 12, 3–26 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10852-012-9177-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10852-012-9177-5

Keywords

Navigation