Parameterized Schemes of Metaheuristics: Basic Ideas and Applications With Genetic Algorithms, Scatter Search, and GRASP

Some optimization problems can be tackled only with metaheuristic methods, and to obtain a satisfactory metaheuristic, it is necessary to develop and experiment with various methods and to tune them for each particular problem. The use of a unified scheme for metaheuristics facilitates the development of metaheuristics by reutilizing the basic functions. In our proposal, the unified scheme is improved by adding transitional parameters. Those parameters are included in each of the functions, in such a way that different values of the parameters provide different metaheuristics or combinations of metaheuristics. Thus, the unified parameterized scheme eases the development of metaheuristics and their application. In this paper, we expose the basic ideas of the parameterization of metaheuristics. This methodology is tested with the application of local and global search methods (greedy randomized adaptive search procedure [GRASP], genetic algorithms, and scatter search), and their combinations, to three scientific problems: obtaining satisfactory simultaneous equation models from a set of values of the variables, a task-to-processor assignment problem with independent tasks and memory constrains, and the p-hub median location-allocation problem.