A cooperative strategy for solving dynamic optimization problems

Optimization in dynamic environments is a very active and important area which tackles problems that change with time (as most real-world problems do). In this paper we present a new centralized cooperative strategy based on trajectory methods (tabu search) for solving Dynamic Optimization Problems (DOPs). Two additional methods are included for comparison purposes. The first method is a Particle Swarm Optimization variant with multiple swarms and different types of particles where there exists an implicit cooperation within each swarm and competition among different swarms. The second method is an explicit decentralized cooperation scheme where multiple agents cooperate to improve a grid of solutions. The main goals are: firstly, to assess the possibilities of trajectory methods in the context of DOPs, where populational methods have traditionally been the recommended option; and secondly, to draw attention on explicitly including cooperation schemes in methods for DOPs. The results show how the proposed strategy can consistently outperform the results of the two other methods. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.