A Specialized Island Model and Its Application in Multiobjective Optimization

This paper discusses a new model of parallel evolutionary algorithms (EAs) called the specialized island model (SIM) that can be used to generate a set of diverse non-dominated solutions to multiobjective optimization problems. This model is derived from the island model, in which an EA is divided into several subEAs that exchange individuals among them. In SIM, each subEA is responsible (i.e., specialized) for optimizing a subset of the objective functions in the original problem. The efficacy of SIM is demonstrated using a three-objective optimization problem. Seven scenarios of the model with a different number of subEAs, communication topology, and specialization are tested, and their results are compared. The results suggest that SIM effectively finds non-dominated solutions to multiobjective optimization problems.