The special session on Multi-/Many-objective Optimization and Learning will be held at BIOMA 2018. More information about this event can be found on the conference web page: http://bioma2018.sciencesconf.org

Scope

Many problems arising in a wide range of application domains can be modeled as multi-objective optimization problems, where multiple criteria need to be optimized simultaneously. The number of objectives is often used to distinguish between multi-objective optimization problems (with 2 or 3 objectives), and many-objective optimization problems (with more than 3 objectives). They typically induce different challenges that can be viewed from different perspectives: optimization goal, algorithm design, search behavior, performance assessment, support to the decision maker, etc. The goal of this special session is precisely to address such challenges, with a particular focus on evolutionary techniques and learning-inspired approaches.

On the one hand, evolutionary algorithms and other classes of bioinspired optimization methods are often used to tackle multi- and many-objective optimization problems. Such randomized search heuristics include genetic algorithms, neighborhood-based search, memetic algorithms, swarm intelligence, differential evolution, estimation of distribution, hyper-heuristics, etc. On the other hand, techniques from machine learning provide promising tools, both to better understand multi- and many-objective optimization approaches and to improve their effectiveness and accelerate their efficiency. Successful applications of bioinspired multi- and many-optimization algorithms can be found in fields like engineering, design, innovation, sustainability, scheduling, timetabling, planning, network design, transportation and distribution problems, vehicle routing, traveling salesman, packing, power systems, image processing, and many others.

Topics of interest

This special session aims at bringing together researchers working on the design, development, theoretical and experimental analysis of bioinspired methods for multi- and many-objective optimization and their applications. The special session will give a particular emphasis on computational intelligence and machine learning techniques for improving the design and understanding of multi- and many-optimization approaches.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Understanding the frontier between multi- and many-objective optimization
• Algorithm performance and behavior analysis
• Theoretical developments
• Visualization techniques
• Problems topology, search space analysis, fitness landscapes
• Connection between problem structure and algorithm performance
• Automated tuning and control of parameters
• Neighborhood structures and efficient algorithms for searching them
• Variation operators for evolutionary and other stochastic search methods
• Parallel and distributed algorithms
• Decomposition-, dominance-, extensions of dominance-, indicator- and set-based search paradigms and their design principles
• Objective reduction, decomposition, objective and decision space transformation, modeling of objective and decision spaces
• Applications of bio-inspired methods to multi- and many-objective continuous/combinatorial/mixed optimization problems
• Real-world applications

Important dates

• Submission deadline: December 1, 2017 December 13, 2017 (extended)
• Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2018
• Final papers: March 1, 2018
• Conference: May 16-18, 2018

Submission

The submission deadline is December 1, 2017 December 13, 2017 (extended). Special session papers have to be submitted via the BIOMA 2018 submission page. We accept two types of submissions:

• Extended abstracts (S1) of a maximum of 3 pages. Extended abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings.
• Long papers (S2) with a maximum of 12 pages. Long papers will be published in the Springer Lectures Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Detailed instructions for paper preparation can be found on the BIOMA 2018 submission page: http://bioma2018.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/2

Session organizers

• Hernán Aguirre — Shinshu University (Japan)
• Bilel Derbel — Univ. Lille (France)
• Bogdan Filipič — Jožef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)
• Arnaud Liefooghe — Univ. Lille (France)
• Tea Tušar — Jožef Stefan Institute (Slovenia)
• Sébastien Verel — Univ. Littoral Côte d'Opale (France)