Evaluation of the evolutionary algorithms performance in many-objective optimization problems using quality indicators

Abstract

The need to address more complex real-world problems gives rise to new research issues in many-objective optimization field. Recently, researchers have focused in developing algorithms able to solve optimization problems with more than three objectives known as many-objective optimization problems. Some methodologies have been developed into the context of this kind of problems, such as A2-NSGA-III that is an adaptive extension of the well-known NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II). A2-NSGA-III was developed for promoting a better spreading of the solutions in the Pareto front using an improved approach based on reference points. In this paper, a comparative study between NSGA-II and A2-NSGA-III is presented. We examine the performance of both algorithms by applying them to the project portfolio problem with 9 and 16 objectives. Our purpose is to validate the effectiveness of A2-NSGA-III to deal with many-objective problems and increase the variety of problems that this method can solve. Several quality indicators were used to measure the performance of the two algorithms.