Interval-based initialization method for permutation-based problems

When dealing with exponential search spaces and when no special knowledge is available on global optima, initial populations for population-based meta-heuristics should be uniformly distributed on the search space in order to sample basins of attraction of all local optima. In this paper, we propose a new initialization strategy for permutation problems. The new method is based on an original tree representation of the search space. Such representation was previously used for exact methods but never for meta-heuristics. The proposed method has been tested using a parallel Genetic Algorithm implemented in the ParadisEO framework and experimented on the Nationwide Grid5000 experimental grid using the Q3AP (3D QAP) permutation problem. The preliminary results are promising.