[alife] CEC Competition at IEEE WCCI 2014 1st CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

[Sergey Polyakovskiy]

**** CEC Competition at IEEE WCCI 2014 1st CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ****

"Optimisation of Problems with Multiple Interdependent Components"
CEC Competition at IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI
2014), 
July 6 - 11, 2014, Beijing International Convention Center, Beijing, China
http://cs.adelaide.edu.au/~optlog/CEC2014Comp/

** Introduction **
Real-world optimization problems often consist of several NP-hard
combinatorial optimization problems that interact with each other. Such
multi-component optimization problems are difficult to solve not only
because of the contained hard optimization problems, but in particular,
because of the interdependencies between the different components.
Interdependence complicates a decision making by forcing each sub-problem to
influence the quality and feasibility of solutions of the other
sub-problems. This influence might be even stronger when one sub-problem
changes the data used by another one through a solution construction
process. Examples of multi-component problems are vehicle routing problems
under loading constraints, the maximizing material utilization while
respecting a production schedule, and the relocation of containers in a port
while minimizing idle times of ships.

The goal of this competition in combination with its associated special
session is to provide a platform for researchers in computational
intelligence working on multi-component optimization problems. The main
focus of this competition is on the combination of TSP and Knapsack
problems. However, we plan to extend this competition format to more complex
combinations of problems (that have typically been dealt with individually
in the past decades) in the upcoming years.

** Technical Details **
The set of benchmarks used in this competition follows the idea of the
"Travelling Thief Problem" (Mohammad Reza Bonyadi, Zbigniew Michalewicz,
Luigi Barone: The travelling thief problem: The first step in the transition
from theoretical problems to realistic problems. IEEE Congress on
Evolutionary Computation 2013: 1037-1044). Eucledian 2D Traveling
Salesperson instances are combined with 0-1-Knapsack instances in such a way
that it reflects aspects of problems from the real-world; for example, the
total weight of the items in the knapsack influences the travel speed of a
traveller. This introduced interdependence sets our benchmarks apart from
capacitated vehicle routing problem instances, where this interdependence
does not exist.

A range of sample instances will be available soon for researchers to
experiment with before the final submission. The samples will include
instances with few/many cities, with uncorrelated/correlated profits and
weights, and instances with further characteristics.

In order to encourage researchers during the weeks before the submission
deadline, we invite them to submit solutions for the sample instances. These
results will be displayed online (without a reference to the authors) and
then will serve as performance indications for other researchers.

** Submission and Evaluation **
Participants will submit executable files via an online system. These files
will be run on our state of the art Linux servers. The evaluation criteria
are

  - final solution quality after a fixed budget of fitness function
evaluations (to mimic "expensive" evaluations), and
  - final solution quality after a fixed budget of computation time (to
mimic the importance of "deadlines").

The technical details will be published online in time.

** Association **
This competition is associated with the Special Session EC23 Heuristic
Methods for Multi-Component Optimization Problems.
http://cs.adelaide.edu.au/~optlog/CEC2014/

** Prize **
We are trying our best to secure money prizes from companies that apply
computational intelligence methods, such as SolveIT Software
(www.solveitsoftware.com), a leading provider of enterprise software for
integrated planning and optimisation.

** Conference Participation **
While we do not require this, we strongly encourage the participants to
register for WCCI 2014 due to the advantages.

** Instances and Additional Details **
To be announced shortly. Please do not hesitate to contact us in case you
would like early access to the instances.

** Contacts **
Sergey Polyakovskiy (sergey.polyakovskiy at adelaide.edu.au)
Markus Wagner (markus.wagner at adelaide.edu.au)
Mohammad Reza Bonyadi (mohammad.bonyadi at adelaide.edu.au)
Frank Neumann (frank.neumann at adelaide.edu.au)
Zbyszek Michalewicz (zbigniew.michalewicz at adelaide.edu.au)

********
This special session is organized as a part of the IEEE Task Force on
Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimization