An Overview of the Concepts, Classifications, and Methods of Population Initialization in Metaheuristic Algorithms

In this study, an overview of the concepts, classifications, and different methods of population initialization in metaheuristic algorithms that discussed in recent literatures will be provided. Population initialization is a basic and common step between all metaheuristic algorithms. Therefore, in this study, an attempt has been made that the performance, methods, mechanisms and categories of population initialization as well as the relationship between population initialization and other important parameters in performance and efficiency of metaheuristic algorithms such as search space size, population size, maximum number of iteration, etc., which are mentioned and considered in the literatures, are collected and presented in a regular format.