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This paper is concerned with the application of computational intelligence techniques to the conceptual design and development of a large-scale floating settlement. The settlement in question is a design for the area of Urla, which is a rural touristic region located on the west coast of Turkey, near the metropolis of Izmir. The problem at hand includes both engineering and architectural aspects that need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. We thus adapt the view as a multi-objective constrained real-parameter optimization problem. Specifically, we consider three objectives, which are conflicting. The first one aims at maximizing accessibility of urban functions such as housing and public spaces, as well as special functions, such as a marina for yachts and a yacht club. The second one aims at ensuring the wind protection of the general areas of the settlement, by adequately placing them in between neighboring land masses. The third one aims at maximizing visibility of the settlement from external observation points, so as to maximize the exposure of the settlement. To address this complex multi-objective optimization problem and identify lucrative alternative design solutions, a multi-objective harmony search algorithm (MOHS) is developed and applied in this paper. When compared to the Differential Evolution algorithm developed for the problem in the literature, we demonstrate that MOHS achieves competitive or slightly better performance in terms of hyper volume calculation, and gives promising results when the Pareto front approximation is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new color watermarking algorithm based on differential evolution is proposed. A color host image is first converted from RGB space to YIQ space, which is more suitable for the human visual system. Then, apply three-level discrete wavelet transformation to luminance component Y and generate four different frequency sub-bands. After that, perform singular value decomposition on these sub-bands. In the watermark embedding process, apply discrete wavelet transformation to a watermark image after the scrambling encryption processing. Our new algorithm uses differential evolution algorithm with adaptive optimization to choose the right scaling factors. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a better performance in terms of invisibility and robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents combination of differential evolution (DE) and biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm to solve complex economic emission load dispatch (EELD) problems of thermal generators of power systems. Emission substances like NO X , SO X , COX, Power demand equality constraint and operating limit constraint are considered here. Differential evolution (DE) is one of the very fast and robust, accurate evolutionary algorithms for global optimization and solution of EELD problems. Biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is another new biogeography inspired algorithm. Biogeography deals with the geographical distribution of different biological species. This algorithm searches for the global optimum mainly through two steps: migration and mutation. In this paper combination of DE and BBO (DE/BBO) is proposed to accelerate the convergence speed of both the algorithm and to improve solution quality. To show the advantages of the proposed algorithm, it has been applied for solving multi-objective EELD problems in a 3-generator system with NO X and SO X emission, in a 6-generators system considering NO X emission, in a 6-generator system addressing both valve-point loading and NO X emission. The current proposal is found better in terms of quality of the compromising and individual solution obtained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The differential evolution algorithm has been widely applied on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning. At present, four random tuning parameters exist for differential evolution algorithm, namely, population size, differential weight, crossover, and generation number. These tuning parameters are required, together with user setting on path and computational cost weightage. However, the optimum settings of these tuning parameters vary according to application. Instead of trial and error, this paper presents an optimization method of differential evolution algorithm for tuning the parameters of UAV path planning. The parameters that this research focuses on are population size, differential weight, crossover, and generation number. The developed algorithm enables the user to simply define the weightage desired between the path and computational cost to converge with the minimum generation required based on user requirement. In conclusion, the proposed optimization of tuning parameters in differential evolution algorithm for UAV path planning expedites and improves the final output path and computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The sale of electric energy generated by photovoltaic (PV) plants has attracted much attention in recent years. The installation of PV plants aims to obtain the maximum benefit of captured solar energy. The current methodologies for planning the design of the different components of a PV plant are not completely efficient. This paper addresses the optimization of the design of PV plants with solar tracking, which consists of the optimization of the variables that make up the PV plant to obtain the minimum electric (Joule) losses possible. These variables are the size and distribution of solar modules in the solar tracker, the distribution of the solar trackers in the field and the choice of inverter. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are adaptive methods based on natural evolution that may be used for searching and optimization. Four different EAs have been used for optimizing the design of PV plants: steady-state genetic algorithm, generational genetic algorithm, CHC algorithm and DE algorithm. In order to test the performance of these algorithms we have used different proposed fields to mount PV plants. The results obtained show that EAs, and specifically DE with rand mutation schemes, are promising techniques to optimize design of PV plants. Furthermore, the results are contrasted with nonparametric statistical tests to support our conclusions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Differential evolution (DE) is one of the most powerful stochastic real parameter optimizers of current interest. In this paper, we propose a new mutation strategy, a fitness-induced parent selection scheme for the binomial crossover of DE, and a simple but effective scheme of adapting two of its most important control parameters with an objective of achieving improved performance. The new mutation operator, which we call DE/current-to-gr_best/1, is a variant of the classical DE/current-to-best/1 scheme. It uses the best of a group (whose size is q\% of the population size) of randomly selected solutions from current generation to perturb the parent (target) vector, unlike DE/current-to-best/1 that always picks the best vector of the entire population to perturb the target vector. In our modified framework of recombination, a biased parent selection scheme has been incorporated by letting each mutant undergo the usual binomial crossover with one of the p top-ranked individuals from the current population and not with the target vector with the same index as used in all variants of DE. A DE variant obtained by integrating the proposed mutation, crossover, and parameter adaptation strategies with the classical DE framework (developed in 1995) is compared with two classical and four state-of-the-art adaptive DE variants over 25 standard numerical benchmarks taken from the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2005 competition and special session on real parameter optimization. Our comparative study indicates that the proposed schemes improve the performance of DE by a large magnitude such that it becomes capable of enjoying statistical superiority over the state-of-the-art DE variants for a wide variety of test problems. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate that, if one or more of our proposed strategies are integrated with existing powerful DE variants such as jDE and JADE, their performances can also be enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper proposes new Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm, named as Chaotically Initialized Differential Evolution (CIDE), that uses chaotic maps with certainty, ergodicity, unpredictability, non-periodicity, complex temporal behavior and the stochastic property for initial population generation. This has been done by using of different chaotic number generators each time a random number is needed by the classical DE algorithm in its initial step. Seven chaotic maps have been analyzed in the benchmark functions. It has been detected that coupling emergent results in different areas, like those of DE and complex dynamics, can improve the quality of results in some optimization problems and also that chaos may be a desired process. It has been also shown that, Sinus map and Circle map have somewhat increased the solution quality, that is in some cases they improved the global searching capability by escaping the local solutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The application of evolutionary computation methods in search and optimization has been growing over the past few decades. As a promising approach in metaheuristic optimization algorithms, differential evolution (DE) has been attracting increasing attention for wide engineering applications including power engineering. Different from conventional evolutionary algorithms using predefined probability distribution function for mutation process, differential evolution exploits the differences of randomly sampled pairs of objective vectors for its mutation process. Consequently the variation between vectors will outfit the objective functions topographical information toward the optimization process, and therefore provides efficient global optimization capability. However, although DE is shown to be precise, fast as well as robust, its search efficiency will be impaired during solution process with fast descending diversity of population. In this paper, detailed numerical studies are carried out to propose the characterization of the performance of several DE mutation methods with and without fitness sharing scheme. All the approaches using the proposed modified DE are presented on an example in power system planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]