Dominance Move: A Measure of Comparing Solution Sets in Multiobjective Optimization

One of the most common approaches for multiobjective optimization is to generate a solution set that well approximates the whole Pareto-optimal frontier to facilitate the later decision-making process. However, how to evaluate and compare the quality of different solution sets remains challenging. Existing measures typically require additional problem knowledge and information, such as a reference point or a substituted set of the Pareto-optimal frontier. In this paper, we propose a quality measure, called dominance move (DoM), to compare solution sets generated by multiobjective optimizers. Given two solution sets, DoM measures the minimum sum of move distances for one set to weakly Pareto dominate the other set. DoM can be seen as a natural reflection of the difference between two solutions, capturing all aspects of solution sets’ quality, being compliant with Pareto dominance, and does not need any additional problem knowledge and parameters. We present an exact method to calculate the DoM in the biobjective case. We show the necessary condition of constructing the optimal partition for a solution set’s minimum move, and accordingly propose an efficient algorithm to recursively calculate the DoM. Finally, DoM is evaluated on several groups of artificial and real test cases as well as by a comparison with two well-established quality measures.