Hyper-Heuristics: Theory and Applications

This introduction to the field of hyper-heuristics presents the required foundations and tools and illustrates some of their applications. The authors organized the 13 chapters into three parts. The first, hyper-heuristic fundamentals and theory, provides an overview of selection constructive, selection perturbative, generation constructive and generation perturbative hyper-heuristics, and then a formal definition of hyper-heuristics. The chapters in the second part of the book examine applications of hyper-heuristics in vehicle routing, nurse rostering, packing and examination timetabling. The third part of the book presents advanced topics and then a summary of the field and future research directions. Finally the appendices offer details of the HyFlex framework and the EvoHyp toolkit, and then the definition, problem model and constraints for the most tested combinatorial optimization problems.

The book will be of value to graduate students, researchers, and practitioners.

Recent technique that aims to effectively solve real-world optimization problems Presents fundamentals, theory, and applications of hyper-heuristics Valuable for researchers, graduate students, and practitioners in the areas of biologically inspired computing, optimization, and operations research

Autorentext

Nelishia Pillay is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pretoria, previously she was a lecturer in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg. Rong Qu is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham. Their research interests include bioinspired and artificial intelligence techniques, particularly applied to operations research problems.

Inhalt

Introduction to Hyper-Heuristics.- Selection Constructive Hyper-Heuristics.- Selection Pertubative Hyper-Heuristics.- Generation Constructive Hyper-Heuristics.- Generation Perturbative Hyper-Heuristics.- Theoretical Aspect: A Formal Definition.- Vehicle Routing Problems.- Nurse Rostering Problems.- Packing Problems.- Examination Timetabling Problems.- Cross-Domain Hyper-Heuristics.- Advances in Hyper-Heuristics.- Conclusions and Future Research Directions.