Metaheuristics “In the Large”

Swan, Jerry and Adriaensen, Steven and Brownlee, Alexander E.I. and Hammond, Kevin and Johnson, Colin G. and Kheiri, Ahmed and Krawiec, Faustyna and Merelo, J.J. and Minku, Leandro L. and Özcan, Ender and Pappa, Gisele L. and García-Sánchez, Pablo and Sörensen, Kenneth and Voß, Stefan and Wagner, Markus and White, David R. (2022) Metaheuristics “In the Large”. European Journal of Operational Research, 297 (2). pp. 393-406. ISSN 0377-2217

Abstract

Following decades of sustained improvement, metaheuristics are one of the great success stories of optimization research. However, in order for research in metaheuristics to avoid fragmentation and a lack of reproducibility, there is a pressing need for stronger scientific and computational infrastructure to support the development, analysis and comparison of new approaches. To this end, we present the vision and progress of the Metaheuristics “In the Large” project. The conceptual underpinnings of the project are: truly extensible algorithm templates that support reuse without modification, white box problem descriptions that provide generic support for the injection of domain specific knowledge, and remotely accessible frameworks, components and problems that will enhance reproducibility and accelerate the field’s progress. We argue that, via such principled choice of infrastructure support, the field can pursue a higher level of scientific enquiry. We describe our vision and report on progress, showing how the adoption of common protocols for all metaheuristics can help liberate the potential of the field, easing the exploration of the design space of metaheuristics.