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The Intelligent Water Drop (IWD) algorithm is a recent stochastic swarm-based method that is useful for solving combinatorial and function optimization problems. In this paper, we propose an IWD ensemble known as the Master-River, Multiple-Creek IWD (MRMC-IWD) model, which serves as an extension of the modified IWD algorithm. The MRMC-IWD model aims to improve the exploration capability of the modified IWD algorithm. It comprises a master river which cooperates with multiple independent creeks to undertake optimization problems based on the divide-and-conquer strategy. A technique to decompose the original problem into a number of sub-problems is first devised. Each sub-problem is then assigned to a creek, while the overall solution is handled by the master river. To empower the exploitation capability, a hybrid MRMC-IWD model is introduced. It integrates the iterative improvement local search method with the MRMC-IWD model to allow a local search to be conducted, therefore enhancing the quality of solutions provided by the master river. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed models, a series of experiments pertaining to two combinatorial problems, i.e., the travelling salesman problem (TSP) and rough set feature subset selection (RSFS), are conducted. The results indicate that the MRMC-IWD model can satisfactorily solve optimization problems using the divide-and-conquer strategy. By incorporating a local search method, the resulting hybrid MRMC-IWD model not only is able to balance exploration and exploitation, but also to enable convergence towards the optimal solutions, by employing a local search method. In all seven selected TSPLIB problems, the hybrid MRMC-IWD model achieves good results, with an average deviation of 0.021% from the best known optimal tour lengths. Compared with other state-of-the-art methods, the hybrid MRMC-IWD model produces the best results (i.e. the shortest and uniform reducts of 20 runs) for all13 selected RSFS problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The optimization algorithms which are inspired from intelligent behavior of honey bees are among the most recently introduced population based techniques. In this paper, a novel algorithm called bee swarm optimization, or BSO, and its two extensions for improving its performance are presented. The BSO is a population based optimization technique which is inspired from foraging behavior of honey bees. The proposed approach provides different patterns which are used by the bees to adjust their flying trajectories. As the first extension, the BSO algorithm introduces different approaches such as repulsion factor and penalizing fitness (RP) to mitigate the stagnation problem. Second, to maintain efficiently the balance between exploration and exploitation, time-varying weights (TVW) are introduced into the BSO algorithm. The proposed algorithm (BSO) and its two extensions (BSO–RP and BSO–RPTVW) are compared with existing algorithms which are based on intelligent behavior of honey bees, on a set of well known numerical test functions. The experimental results show that the BSO algorithms are effective and robust; produce excellent results, and outperform other algorithms investigated in this consideration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]