This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2016, held in Edinburgh, UK, in September 2016. The total of 93 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 224 submissions. The meeting began with four workshops which offered an ideal opportunity to explore specific topics in intelligent transportation Workshop, landscape-aware heuristic search, natural computing in scheduling and timetabling, and advances in multi-modal optimization. PPSN XIV also included sixteen free tutorials to give us all the opportunity to learn about new aspects: gray box optimization in theory; theory of evolutionary computation; graph-based and cartesian genetic programming; theory of parallel evolutionary algorithms; promoting diversity in evolutionary optimization: why and how; evolutionary multi-objective optimization; intelligent systems for smart cities; advances on multi-modal optimization; evolutionary computation in cryptography; evolutionary robotics - a practical guide to experiment with real hardware; evolutionary algorithms and hyper-heuristics; a bridge between optimization over manifolds and evolutionary computation; implementing evolutionary algorithms in the cloud; the attainment function approach to performance evaluation in EMO; runtime analysis of evolutionary algorithms: basic introduction; meta-model assisted (evolutionary) optimization. The papers are organized in topical sections on adaption, self-adaption and parameter tuning; differential evolution and swarm intelligence; dynamic, uncertain and constrained environments; genetic programming; multi-objective, many-objective and multi-level optimization; parallel algorithms and hardware issues; real-word applications and modeling; theory; diversity and landscape analysis.

This two-volume set LNCS 11101 and 11102 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2018, held in Coimbra, Portugal, in September 2018. The 79 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 205 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in natural computing including evolutionary computation, artificial neural networks, artificial life, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, self-organizing systems, emergent behavior, molecular computing, evolutionary robotics, evolvable hardware, parallel implementations and applications to real-world problems. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: numerical optimization; combinatorial optimization; genetic programming; multi-objective optimization; parallel and distributed frameworks; runtime analysis and approximation results; fitness landscape modeling and analysis; algorithm configuration, selection, and benchmarking; machine learning and evolutionary algorithms; and applications. Also included are the descriptions of 23 tutorials and 6 workshops which took place in the framework of PPSN XV.

This two-volume set LNCS 13398 and LNCS 13399 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2022, held in Dortmund, Germany, in September 2022. The 87 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The conference presents a study of computing methods derived from natural models. Amorphous Computing, Artificial Life, Artificial Ant Systems, Artificial Immune Systems, Artificial Neural Networks, Cellular Automata, Evolutionary Computation, Swarm Computing, Self-Organizing Systems, Chemical Computation, Molecular Computation, Quantum Computation, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence approaches using Natural Computing methods are just some of the topics covered in this field.

The challenges in ecosystem science encompass a broadening and strengthening of interdisciplinary ties, the transfer of knowledge of the ecosystem across scales, and the inclusion of anthropogenic impacts and human behavior into ecosystem, landscape, and regional models. The volume addresses these points within the context of studies in major ecosystem types viewed as the building blocks of central European landscapes. The research is evaluated to increase the understanding of the processes in order to unite ecosystem science with resource management. The comparison embraces coastal lowland forests, associated wetlands and lakes, agricultural land use, and montane and alpine forests. Techniques for upscaling focus on process modelling at stand and landscape scales and the use of remote sensing for landscape-level model parameterization and testing. The case studies demonstrate ways for ecosystem scientists, managers, and social scientists to cooperate.

We are very pleased to present to you this LNCS volume, the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN 2010). PPSN is one of the most respected and highly regarded c- ference series in evolutionary computation, and indeed in natural computation aswell.Thisbiennialeventwas?rstheldinDortmundin1990, andtheninBr- sels (1992), Jerusalem (1994), Berlin (1996), Amsterdam (1998), Paris (2000), Granada (2002), Birmingham (2004), Reykjavik (2006) and again in Dortmund in 2008. PPSN 2010 received 232 submissions. After an extensive peer review p- cess involving more than 180 reviewers, the program committee chairs went through all the review reports and ranked the papers according to the revi- ers’comments. Each paper wasevaluated by at least three reviewers.Additional reviewers from the appropriate branches of science were invoked to review into disciplinary papers. The top 128 papers were ?nally selected for inclusion in the proceedings and presentation at the conference. This represents an acceptance rate of 55%, which guarantees that PPSN will continue to be one of the c- ferences of choice for bio-inspired computing and metaheuristics researchers all over the world who value the quality over the size of a conference. The papers included in the proceedingsvolumes covera wide range of topics, fromevolutionarycomputationto swarmintelligence, frombio-inspiredcomp- ing to real-world applications. Machine learning and mathematical games s- portedbyevolutionaryalgorithmsaswellasmemetic, agent-orientedsystemsare also represented. They all are the latest and best in natural computation. The proceedings are composed of two volumes divided into nine thematic sections.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature,PPSN 2002, held in Granada, Spain in September 2002. The 90 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 181 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on evolutionary algorithms theory, representation and codification, variation operators, evolutionary techniques and coevolution, multiobjective optimization, new techniques for evolutionary algorithms, hybrid algorithms, learning classifier systems, implementation of evolutionary algorithms, applications, and cellular automata and ant colony optimization.

We are proud to introduce the proceedings of the Seventh International C- ference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN VII, held in Granada, Spain, on 7–11 September 2002. PPSN VII was organized back-to-back with the Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA) conference, which took place in Torremolinos, Malaga, Spain, in the preceding week. ThePPSNseriesofconferencesstartedinDortmund,Germany[1].Fromthat pioneering meeting, the event has been held biennially, in Brussels, Belgium [2], Jerusalem, Israel [3], Berlin, Germany [4], Amsterdam, The Netherlands [5], and Paris, France [6]. During the Paris conference, several bids to host PPSN 2002 were put forward; it was decided that the conference would be held in Granada with Juan J. Merelo Guerv ́ os as General Chairman. The scienti?c content of the PPSN conference focuses on problem-solving paradigms gleaned from natural models, with an obvious emphasis on those that display an innate parallelism, such as evolutionary algorithms and ant-colony optimization algorithms. The majority of the papers, however, concentrate on evolutionary and hybrid algorithms, as is shown in the contents of this book and itspredecessors.Thiseditionoftheconferenceproceedingshasalargesectionon applications,betheytoclassicalproblemsortoreal-worldengineeringproblems, which shows how bioinspired algorithms are extending their use in the realms of business and enterprise.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2004, held in Birmingham, UK, in September 2004. The 119 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 358 submissions. The papers address all current issues in biologically inspired computing; they are organized in topical sections on theoretical and foundational issues, new algorithms, applications, multi-objective optimization, co-evolution, robotics and multi-agent systems, and learning classifier systems and data mining.

This book presents the state of the art in designing high-performance algorithms that combine simulation and optimization in order to solve complex optimization problems in science and industry, problems that involve time-consuming simulations and expensive multi-objective function evaluations. As traditional optimization approaches are not applicable per se, combinations of computational intelligence, machine learning, and high-performance computing methods are popular solutions. But finding a suitable method is a challenging task, because numerous approaches have been proposed in this highly dynamic field of research. That’s where this book comes in: It covers both theory and practice, drawing on the real-world insights gained by the contributing authors, all of whom are leading researchers. Given its scope, if offers a comprehensive reference guide for researchers, practitioners, and advanced-level students interested in using computational intelligence and machine learning to solve expensive optimization problems.