Evolutionary computation for real-world problems

Abstract

In this paper we discuss three topics that are present in the area of real-world optimization, but are often neglected in academic research in evolutionary computation community. First, problems that are a combination of several interacting sub-problems (so-called multi-component problems) are common in many real-world applications and they deserve better attention of research community. Second, research on optimisation algorithms that focus the search on the edges of feasible regions of the search space is important as high quality solutions usually are the boundary points between feasible and infeasible parts of the search space in many real-world problems. Third, finding bottlenecks and best possible investment in real-world processes are important topics that are also of interest in real-world optimization. In this chapter we discuss application opportunities for evolutionary computation methods in these three areas.