The NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Algorithms for continuous optimiza tion: the state of the art" was held September 5-18, 1993, at II Ciocco, Barga, Italy. It was attended by 75 students (among them many well known specialists in optimiza tion) from the following countries: Belgium, Brasil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA, Venezuela. The lectures were given by 17 well known specialists in the field, from Brasil, China, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, UK, USA. Solving continuous optimization problems is a fundamental task in computational mathematics for applications in areas of engineering, economics, chemistry, biology and so on. Most real problems are nonlinear and can be of quite large size. Devel oping efficient algorithms for continuous optimization has been an important field of research in the last 30 years, with much additional impetus provided in the last decade by the availability of very fast and parallel computers. Techniques, like the simplex method, that were already considered fully developed thirty years ago have been thoroughly revised and enormously improved. The aim of this ASI was to present the state of the art in this field. While not all important aspects could be covered in the fifty hours of lectures (for instance multiob jective optimization had to be skipped), we believe that most important topics were presented, many of them by scientists who greatly contributed to their development.

Challenges, Opportunities and Solutions in Structural Engineering and Construction addresses the latest developments in innovative and integrative technologies and solutions in structural engineering and construction, including: Concrete, masonry, steel and composite structures; Dynamic impact and earthquake engineering; Bridges and

A unified view of metaheuristics This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement efficient algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of applications, from networking and bioinformatics to engineering design, routing, and scheduling. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics and clearly illustrates how to implement the algorithms under a software framework to reuse both the design and code. Throughout the book, the key search components of metaheuristics are considered as a toolbox for: Designing efficient metaheuristics (e.g. local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, ant colonies, bee colonies, artificial immune systems) for optimization problems Designing efficient metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization problems Designing hybrid, parallel, and distributed metaheuristics Implementing metaheuristics on sequential and parallel machines Using many case studies and treating design and implementation independently, this book gives readers the skills necessary to solve large-scale optimization problems quickly and efficiently. It is a valuable reference for practicing engineers and researchers from diverse areas dealing with optimization or machine learning; and graduate students in computer science, operations research, control, engineering, business and management, and applied mathematics.

Memetic Algorithms (MAs) are computational intelligence structures combining multiple and various operators in order to address optimization problems. The combination and interaction amongst operators evolves and promotes the diffusion of the most successful units and generates an algorithmic behavior which can handle complex objective functions and hard fitness landscapes. “Handbook of Memetic Algorithms” organizes, in a structured way, all the the most important results in the field of MAs since their earliest definition until now. A broad review including various algorithmic solutions as well as successful applications is included in this book. Each class of optimization problems, such as constrained optimization, multi-objective optimization, continuous vs combinatorial problems, uncertainties, are analysed separately and, for each problem, memetic recipes for tackling the difficulties are given with some successful examples. Although this book contains chapters written by multiple authors, a great attention has been given by the editors to make it a compact and smooth work which covers all the main areas of computational intelligence optimization. It is not only a necessary read for researchers working in the research area, but also a useful handbook for practitioners and engineers who need to address real-world optimization problems. In addition, the book structure makes it an interesting work also for graduate students and researchers is related fields of mathematics and computer science.

Mathematical Models and Algorithms for Power System Optimization helps readers build a thorough understanding of new technologies and world-class practices developed by the State Grid Corporation of China, the organization responsible for the world's largest power distribution network. This reference covers three areas: power operation planning, electric grid investment and operational planning and power system control. It introduces economic dispatching, generator maintenance scheduling, power flow, optimal load flow, reactive power planning, load frequency control and transient stability, using mathematic models including optimization, dynamic, differential and difference equations. - Provides insights on the development of new mathematical models of power system optimization - Analyzes power systems comprehensively to create novel mathematic models and algorithms for issues related to the planning operation of power systems - Includes research on the optimization of power systems and related practical research projects carried out since 1981

This textbook provides the reader with an essential understanding of computational methods for intelligent systems. These are defined as systems that can solve problems autonomously, in particular problems where algorithmic solutions are inconceivable for humans or not practically executable by computers. Despite the rapidly growing applications in this field, the book avoids application details, instead focusing on computational methods that equip the reader with the methodological tools and competencies necessary to tackle current and future complex applications. The book consists of two parts: computational intelligence methods for optimization, and machine learning. Part I begins with the concept of optimization, and introduces local search algorithms, genetic algorithms, and particle swarm optimization. Part II begins with an introduction to machine learning and covers several methods, many of which can be used as supervised learning algorithms, such as decision tree learning, artificial neural networks, genetic programming, Bayesian learning, support vector machines, and ensemble methods, plus a discussion of unsupervised learning. This textbook is written in a self-contained style, suitable for undergraduate or graduate students in computer science and engineering, and for self-study by researchers and practitioners.

A rigorous yet accessible graduate textbook covering both fundamental and advanced optimization theory and algorithms.

Rubinstein is the pioneer of the well-known score function and cross-entropy methods. Accessible to a broad audience of engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and in general anyone, theorist and practitioner, who is interested in smart simulation, fast optimization, learning algorithms, and image processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Metaheuristics, MIC 2022, held in Syracuse, Italy, in July 2022. The 48 full papers together with 17 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers detail metaheuristic techniques. Chapter “Evaluating the Effects of Chaos in Variable Neighbourhood Search” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence, ICCCI 2013, held in Craiova, Romania, in September 2013. The 72 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from numerous submissions. Conference papers are organized in 16 technical sessions, covering the following topics: intelligent e-learning, classification and clustering methods, web intelligence and interaction, agents and multi-agent systems, social networks, intelligent knowledge management, language processing systems, modeling and optimization techniques, evolutionary computation, intelligent and group decision making, swarm intelligence, data mining techniques and applications, cooperative problem solving, collective intelligence for text mining and innovation, collective intelligence for social understanding and mining, and soft methods in collective intelligence.