An Efficient Application of Goal Programming to Tackle Multiobjective Problems with Recurring Fitness Landscapes

Pinheiro, Rodrigo Lankaites; Landa-Silva, Dario; Laesanklang, Wasakorn; Constantino, Ademir Aparecido

Abstract

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Many real-world applications require decision-makers to assess the quality of solutions while considering multiple conflicting objectives. Obtaining good approximation sets for highly constrained many-objective problems is often a difficult task even for modern multiobjective algorithms. In some cases, multiple instances of the problem scenario present similarities in their fitness landscapes. That is, there are recurring features in the fitness landscapes when searching for solutions to different problem instances. We propose a methodology to exploit this characteristic by solving one instance of a given problem scenario using computationally expensive multiobjective algorithms to obtain a good approximation set and then using Goal Programming with efficient single-objective algorithms to solve other instances of the same problem scenario. We use three goal-based objective functions and show that on benchmark instances of the multiobjective vehicle routing problem with time windows, the methodology is able to produce good results in short computation time. The methodology allows to combine the effectiveness of state-of-the-art multiobjective algorithms with the efficiency of goal programming to find good compromise solutions in problem scenarios where instances have similar fitness landscapes.

Citation

Pinheiro, R. L., Landa-Silva, D., Laesanklang, W., & Constantino, A. A. (2019). An Efficient Application of Goal Programming to Tackle Multiobjective Problems with Recurring Fitness Landscapes. In Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (134-152). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16035-7_8

• Acceptance Date: Jun 15, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 16, 2020
• Journal: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• Print ISSN: 1865-0929
• Electronic ISSN: 1865-0929
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 986
• Pages: 134-152
• Series Title: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• Series Number: 966
• Book Title: Operations Research and Enterprise Systems
• ISBN: 9783030160340
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16035-7_8
• Keywords: Multi-criteria decision making; Goal programming; Pareto optimisation; Multiobjective vehicle routing
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/938669
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-16035-7_8
• Additional Information: First Online: 15 March 2019; Conference Acronym: ICORES; Conference Name: International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems; Conference City: Funchal; Conference Country: Portugal; Conference Year: 2018; Conference Start Date: 24 January 2018; Conference End Date: 26 January 2018; Conference Number: 7; Conference ID: icores2018; Conference URL: http://www.icores.org/?y=2018