This task force will focus on all aspects of multi-modal optimization, including theory, practice and applications covering all different search-based paradigms, such as Evolutionary Computation and Swarm Intelligence algorithms. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Benchmarking multi-modal optimization methods, including test problem design, analysis and performance metrics
Comparative studies of various multi-modal optimization methods
{Hyper,Meta}-heuristic approaches for multi-modal optimization problems
Handling the issue of niching parameters in multi-modal optimization methods (adaptive or parameter-less methods)
Handling the scalability (both dimensionality and modality) issue in multi-modal optimization methods
Hybridization of meta-heuristic approaches with neural networks, fuzzy systems, information theory, statistics, mathematical modeling, etc., for multi-modal optimization
Landscape analysis for multi-modal optimization problems
Multi-modal optimization methods that incurs lower computational costs (minimal budgets)
Multi-objective approaches for multi-modal optimization methodologies/problems
Multi-modal optimization approaches for multi-objective methodologies/problems
Multi-modal optimization in bi-level optimization problems.
Multi-modal optimization in combinatorial/discrete optimization problems
Multi-modal optimization in computational expensive optimization problems
Multi-modal optimization in constrained optimization problems
Multi-modal optimization in dynamic environments
Multi-modal optimization in large-scale optimization problems.
Multi-modal optimization methods applied to engineering and other real-world optimization problems
Multi-modal optimization methods using parallel or distributed computing techniques
Multi-modal optimization methods to locate all local and global optima
Novel level-set, niching, basin of attraction identification methodologies
Exploration vs exploitation in multi-modal optimization
Operational Research approaches for multi-modal optimization problems
Theoretical analysis and developments in multi-modal optimization