Metaheuristics "In the Large"

Abstract

Following decades of sustained improvement, metaheuristics are one of the great success stories of optimization research. However, in order for research in metaheuristics to avoid fragmentation and a lack of reproducibility, there is a pressing need for stronger scientific and computational infrastructure to support the development, analysis and comparison of new approaches. We argue that, via principled choice of infrastructure support, the field can pursue a higher level of scientific enquiry. We describe our vision and report on progress, showing how the adoption of common protocols for all metaheuristics can help liberate the potential of the field, easing the exploration of the design space of metaheuristics.

Neighborhood Enumeration in Local Search Metaheuristics

“…Nevertheless, efforts are underway to mature the discipline. Notable examples of this are (i) the endorsement by the Journal of Heuristics of the view that nature should no longer serve as an explicit inspiration for "novel" metaheuristics, (ii) the recognition of the need for white-box algorithm implementations, preferably described in a purely functional style [8], (iii) the call for rigorous evaluation and testing practices, and (iv) the active promotion of a view of what metaheuristics research ought to be [7].…”