Modern real-valued optimization problems are complex and high-dimensional, and they are known as “large-scale global optimization (LSGO)” problems. Classic evolutionary algorithms (EAs) perform poorly on this class of problems because of the curse of dimensionality. Cooperative Coevolution (CC) is a high-performed framework for performing the decomposition of large-scale problems into smaller and easier subproblems by grouping objective variables. The efficiency of CC strongly depends on the size of groups and the grouping approach. In this study, an improved CC (iCC) approach for solving LSGO problems has been proposed and investigated. iCC changes the number of variables in subcomponents dynamically during the optimization process. The SHADE algorithm is used as a subcomponent optimizer. We have investigated the performance of iCC-SHADE and CC-SHADE on fifteen problems from the LSGO CEC’13 benchmark set provided by the IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation. The results of numerical experiments have shown that iCC-SHADE outperforms, on average, CC-SHADE with a fixed number of subcomponents. Also, we have compared iCC-SHADE with some state-of-the-art LSGO metaheuristics. The experimental results have shown that the proposed algorithm is competitive with other efficient metaheuristics.

Modern computational mathematics and informatics for Digital Environments deal with the high dimensionality when designing and optimizing models for various real-world phenomena. Large-scale global black-box optimization (LSGO) is still a hard problem for search metaheuristics, including bio-inspired algorithms. Such optimization problems are usually extremely multi-modal, and require significant computing resources for discovering and converging to the global optimum. The majority of state-of-the-art LSGO algorithms are based on problem decomposition with the cooperative co-evolution (CC) approach, which divides the search space into a set of lower dimensional subspaces (or subcomponents), which are expected to be easier to explore independently by an optimization algorithm. The question of the choice of the decomposition method remains open, and an adaptive decomposition looks more promising. As we can see from the most recent LSGO competitions, winner-approaches are focused on modifying advanced DE algorithms through integrating them with local search techniques. In this study, an approach that combines multiple ideas from state-of-the-art algorithms and implements Coordination of Self-adaptive Cooperative Co-evolution algorithms with Local Search (COSACC-LS1) is proposed. The self-adaptation method tunes both the structure of the complete approach and the parameters of each algorithm in the cooperation. The performance of COSACC-LS1 has been investigated using the CEC LSGO 2013 benchmark and the experimental results has been compared with leading LSGO approaches. The main contribution of the study is a new self-adaptive approach that is preferable for solving hard real-world problems because it is not overfitted with the LSGO benchmark due to self-adaptation during the search process instead of a manual benchmark-specific fine-tuning.

In this study, the modification of the quantum multi-swarm optimization algorithm is proposed for dynamic optimization problems. The modification implies using the search operators from differential evolution algorithm with a certain probability within particle swarm optimization to improve the algorithm’s search capabilities in dynamically changing environments. For algorithm testing, the Generalized Moving Peaks Benchmark was used. The experiments were performed for four benchmark settings, and the sensitivity analysis to the main parameters of algorithms is performed. It is shown that applying the mutation operator from differential evolution to the personal best positions of the particles allows for improving the algorithm performance.

Many modern real-valued optimization tasks use “black-box” (BB) models for evaluating objective functions and they are high-dimensional and constrained. Using common classifications, we can identify them as constrained large-scale global optimization (cLSGO) tasks. Today, the IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation provides a special session and several benchmarks for LSGO. At the same time, cLSGO problems are not well studied yet. The majority of modern optimization techniques demonstrate insufficient performance when confronted with cLSGO tasks. The effectiveness of evolution algorithms (EAs) in solving constrained low-dimensional optimization problems has been proven in many scientific papers and studies. Moreover, the cooperative coevolution (CC) framework has been successfully applied for EA used to solve LSGO problems. In this paper, a new approach for solving cLSGO has been proposed. This approach is based on CC and a method that increases the size of groups of variables at the decomposition stage (iCC) when solving cLSGO tasks. A new algorithm has been proposed, which combined the success-history based parameter adaptation for differential evolution (SHADE) optimizer, iCC, and the ε-constrained method (namely ε-iCC-SHADE). We investigated the performance of the ε-iCC-SHADE and compared it with the previously proposed ε-CC-SHADE algorithm on scalable problems from the IEEE CEC 2017 Competition on constrained real-parameter optimization.

Accurately forecasting power consumption is crucial important for efficient energy management. Machine learning (ML) models are often employed for this purpose. However, tuning their hyperparameters is a complex and time-consuming task. The article presents a novel multi-objective (MO) hybrid evolutionary-based approach, GA-SHADE-MO, for tuning ML models aimed at solving the complex problem of forecasting power consumption. The proposed algorithm simultaneously optimizes both hyperparameters and feature sets across six different ML models, ensuring enhanced accuracy and efficiency. The study focuses on predicting household power consumption at hourly and daily levels. The hybrid MO evolutionary algorithm integrates elements of genetic algorithms and self-adapted differential evolution. By incorporating MO optimization, GA-SHADE-MO balances the trade-offs between model complexity (the number of used features) and prediction accuracy, ensuring robust performance across various forecasting scenarios. Experimental numerical results show the superiority of the proposed method compared to traditional tuning techniques, and random search, showcasing significant improvements in predictive accuracy and computational efficiency. The findings suggest that the proposed GA-SHADE-MO approach offers a powerful tool for optimizing ML models in the context of energy consumption forecasting, with potential applications in other domains requiring precise predictive modeling. The study contributes to the advancement of ML optimization techniques, providing a framework that can be adapted and extended for various predictive analytics tasks.

Unconstrained continuous large-scale global optimization (LSGO) is still a challenging task for a wide range of modern metaheuristic approaches. A cooperative coevolution approach is a good tool for increasing the performance of an evolutionary algorithm in solving high-dimensional optimization problems. However, the performance of cooperative coevolution approaches for LSGO depends significantly on the problem decomposition, namely, on the number of subcomponents and on how variables are grouped in these subcomponents. Also, the choice of the population size is still an open question for population-based algorithms. This paper discusses a method for selecting the number of subcomponents and the population size during the optimization process (“on fly”) from a predefined pool of parameters. The selection of the parameters is based on their performance in the previous optimization steps. The main goal of the study is the improvement of coevolutionary decomposition-based algorithms for solving LSGO problems. In this paper, we propose a novel self-adapt evolutionary algorithm for solving continuous LSGO problems. We have tested this algorithm on 15 optimization problems from the IEEE LSGO CEC’2013 benchmark suite. The proposed approach, on average, outperforms cooperative coevolution algorithms with a static number of subcomponents and a static number of individuals.