Heuristic derives from the verb heuriskein which means “to find”, while the suffix meta means

“beyond,
in an upper level”.

Examples of metaheuristics include-but not limited to- Ant Colony Optimisation, Evolutionary
Computation including Genetic Algorithm, Iterated Local Search, Simulated Annealing and Tabu
Search. Nowadays metaheuristics are widely used to solve important practical combinatorial
Optimisation problems.

-fundamental properties which characterize metaheuristics:

 Metaheuristics are strategies that guide the search process.

 The goal is to efficiently explore the search space in order to find (near) optimal
solutions.
 Techniques which constitute metaheuristics algorithms range from simple local search
procedures to complex learning processes.
 Metaheuristic algorithms are approximate and usually non-deterministic.
 They may incorporate mechanism to avoid getting trapped in confined areas of the search
space.
 Metaheuristics are not problem-specific.
 Todays more advanced metaheuristics use search experience (embodied in some form of
memory) to guide the search.

Simulated Annealing

Metastrategy simulated annealing and tabu search algorithms for the vehicle routing problem.

Tabu Search

Tabu (or taboo) … indicate things that can not be touched because they are sacred; the word tabu now
also means “a prohibition imposed by social custom as a protective measure: or of something “banned
as constituting a risk”.

The risk to be avoided in this case is that of following a counter-productive course, including one which
may lead to entrapment without hope of escape. On the other hand, as in the broader social context
where “protective prohibitions” are capable of being superseded when the occasion demands, the
“tabus” of tabu search are to be overruled when evidence of a preferred alternative becomes
compelling.

The most important association with traditional usage, however, stems from the fact that tabus as
normally conceived are transmitted by means of a social memory which is subject to
modification over time. This creates the fundamental link to the meaning of “tabu” in TS. The
forbidden elements of TS receive their status by reliance on an evolving memory, which allows
this status to shift according to time and circumstance. More particularly, TS is based on the
premise that problem solving, in order to qualify as intelligent, must incorporate adaptive
memory and responsive exploration. The adaptive memory feature of TS allows the
implementation of procedures that implement a form of sampling (Fred Glover
Manuel Laguna, 1997).

Tabu Search Foundations and Short Term Memory

The meta-heuristic approach called tabu search (TS) is dramatically changing our
ability to
solve problems of practical significance. Current applications of TS span the realms of
resource planning, telecommunications, VLSI design, financial analysis, scheduling,
space
planning, energy distribution, molecular engineering, logistics, pattern classification,
flexible
manufacturing, waste management, mineral exploration, biomedical analysis,
environmental
conservation

A distinguishing feature of tabu search is embodied in its exploitation of adaptive

forms of
memory, which equips it to penetrate complexities that often confound alternative
approaches.

Recency-Based Memory

In a system that uses memory, a bad choice

based on strategy can provide useful clues about how the strategy may profitably be
changed.
(Even in a space with significant randomness a purposeful design can be more adept
at
uncovering the imprint of structure.)
Responsive exploration integrates the basic principles of intelligent search, i.e.,
exploiting good
solution features while exploring new promising regions. Tabu search is concerned
with
finding new and more effective ways of taking advantage of the mechanisms associated
with
both adaptive memory and responsive exploration. The development of new designs
and
strategic mixes makes TS a fertile area for research and empirical study.

Reactive Search Optimization (RSO) advocates the integration of sub-symbolic machine learning
techniques into search heuristics for solving complex optimization problems. The word reactive hints at
a ready response to events during the search through an internal online feedback loop for the self-
tuning of critical parameters.
Methodologies of interest for Reactive Search include machine learning and statistics, in particular
reinforcement learning, active or query learning, neural networks, and meta-heuristics (although the
boundary signalled by the "meta" prefix is not always clear).

Nature-Inspired Metaheuristic Algorithms

Modern metaheuristic algorithms such as bee algorithms and harmony search start to
demonstrate their power in dealing with tough optimization problems and even NP-hard
problems. This book reviews and introduces the state-of-the-art nature-inspired metaheuristic
algorithms in optimization, including genetic algorithms, bee algorithms, particle swarm
optimization, simulated annealing, ant colony optimization, harmony search, and firefly
algorithms. We also briefly introduce the photosynthetic algorithm, the enzyme algorithm, and
Tabu search. Worked examples with implementation have been used to show how each
algorithm works. This book is thus an ideal textbook for an undergraduate and/or graduate
course. As some of the algorithms such as the harmony search and firefly algorithms are at the
forefront of current research, this book can also serve as a reference book for researchers.

Evolutionary Algorithms

Evolutionary Algorithms belong to the Evolutionary Computation field of study concerned with
computational methods inspired by the process and mechanisms of biological evolution. The process of
evolution by means of natural selection (descent with modification) was proposed byDarwin to account
for the variety of life and its suitability (adaptive t) for its environment.The mechanisms of evolution
describe how evolution actually takes place through the modification and propagation of genetic
material (proteins). Evolutionary algorithms are concerned with investigating computations that
resemble simplied versions of the processes and mechanisms of evolution toward achieving the effects
of these processes and mechanisms, namely the development of adaptive systems. Additional subject
areas that fall within the realm of Evolutionary Computation are algorithms that seek to exploit the
properties from the related fields of Population Genetics, Population Ecology, Coevolutionary Biology,
and Developmental Biology.

“Nature-Inspired Collective Intelligence in Theory and Practice”

The past twenty years have witnessed an increasingly large emphasis in the computer science
community on the study of bio-inspired computing. A wide spectrum of applications and services has
been currently developed and designed which relies on various natural biological paradigms. The most
known examples are swarm intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, and the artificial neural networks.
Such paradigms find applications in the areas of network security, pervasive computing, mobile and
embedded systems, pattern recognition, data classification and many others.
It is of extreme importance to bridge more artificial intelligence methods and communication
technologies with biological sciences and capture the analogy between these disciplines. The
collaborative work of swarms individuals can solve complex optimization problems in many areas of
engineering, not only in transportation/communication networks. The artificial immune system can
efficiently detect changes in the environment or deviations from the normal system behavior via self-
optimization and learning process. The concepts of intercellular information exchange can be used to
learn: efficient dispatching, shortening of signaling pathways

and modeling the control loop for a regulatory process in an organism. Some bio-ideas can be
successfully exploited to elaborate good strategies against cascading failures in the systems, even
terrorism.

The aim of the Special Issue is to highlight an ongoing research on different methodological and
technological approaches of nature-inspired theory and collective intelligence together with their
applications on various domains. Relevant topics include but not limited to: • Nature-inspired methods
for Bioinformatics Tools and Computational Biology • Intelligent Decision Making Systems • Bio-inspired
Computing Models • Cellular and Organic Grids, Agent Colonies • Computational Neuroscience • Natural
Team Formation • Nature-inspired Performance Evaluation • Self-adaptation, self-maintaining, and self-
healing • Social Collective and Swarm Intelligence

Animal Inspired Metaheurstic Algorithms (Quran 27:18.) When foraging, a swarm of ants interact with
their.... we are surely inspired to develop more powerful and efficient new algorithms. ...

In the Holy Scriptures, some verses pertaining to them are mentioned. For example, in the Holy
Quran,

“At length, when they came to a (lowly) valley of ants, one of the ants said: "O ye ants get into
your habitations, lest Solomon and his hosts crush you (under foot) without knowing it."
(Quran 27:18.)

When foraging, a swarm of ants interact with their environment locally. Although, there is no
leader nor is there a centralize command, the ants still can communicate with each other via
pheromones in finding their source of foods and paths. Foraging ants travel for distances of up to
200 meters from their nest [2] and usually find their way back using pheromone trails. With an
average speed of 0.5 cm per second (this varies with the species of ant); a moving ant lays some
pheromones (in varying quantities) on the ground, thus marking the path by a trail of this
substance. While an isolated ant moves essentially at random, an ant encountering a previously
laid trail can detect it and decide with high probability to follow it, thus reinforcing the trail with
its own pheromone. According to Dorigo et al. [3], the collective behaviour that emerges is a
form of autocatalytic behavior where the more the number of ants following a trail, the more
attractive that particular trail becomes to be followed.
DISCUSSION

In order to develop a completely new animal inspired algorithm, we have to observe study and
learn from the creature’s nature behavior. Each being has its own unique behavior and each
provide almost unlimited ways for problem solving. If we can study carefully, we are surely
inspired to develop more powerful and efficient new algorithms.

As we can see, all the algorithms are based on the behavior of the animals with slight and small
modifications to suit the needs of the algorithm itself. Due to the active nature of research on the
particular animals which are still currently being done in laboratories, each significant behavior
should be added into the algorithms instead of focusing on the process of hybridization.
Although hybrid method is very popular among the researchers, we also rely upon the actual
biological criteria of the animal itself. Take for example, the case of hybridization of BA with
PSO; BA as we know can only send information about the nectar location on the dance floor. By
adding PSO, the message will be sent out of the hive. To us, this is not consistent with the natural
behavior of the bee.

Naturally, ants and bees hunt for their colony and serve the queen. Monkeys, fireflies and flies
look for food and a mate for themselves. The communication medium for the ant colony is via
the pheromone (which is passed from ant to ant while foraging). Bees exercise the ‘waggle
dance’ in hives after foraging. There is no group searching for monkeys while climbing for food.
A firefly does not share its information while at the same is engaged in finding the best mate. A
fly makes contact with its neighbors via neuronal signaling (while searching) and pheromone
(while mating). We can observe clearly, one of the main advantages of the fly is that,
information sharing

among the group is faster than any of the other animals. Thus, the searching period for
optimization for the fly will be shorter.

Theoretically, the whole ant colony loses its direction and energy when being attacked while
foraging or when the food is suddenly removed. For bees, only the particular bee concerned will
be affected. However if the attacker is close to the hive or swarm of bees, the whole bee colony
may ‘fight brutally’. Meanwhile, a fly on the other hand, will still be flying around the potential
area hunting for food. It may well be observed too that getting rid of flies while on a picnic or
having a barbecue, is not actually an easy task!

Various applications have been carried out recently in the last five years. These include the
combinatorial optimization, job scheduling, web-hosting allocation, engineering design
optimization, function optimization, reservoir modeling and the TSP, training neural networks,
forming manufacturing cells, scheduling jobs for a production machine, finding multiple feasible
solutions to a preliminary design problems, data clustering, optimizing the design of mechanical
components, multi-objective optimization., tuning a fuzzy logic controller and many others. It
would be futile to mention all of them.
Bees

Bees, like ants, are specialized species of the wasp. A honey bee queen may lay 2000 eggs per
day during spring buildup, but she also must lay 1000 to 1500 eggs per day during the foraging
season, mostly to replace the daily casualties, most of which are workers dying of old age

It has been stated in the Holy Quran,

Your Lord revealed to the bees: "Build dwellings in the mountains and the trees, and also in
the structures which men erect. Then eat from every kind of fruit and travel the paths of your
Lord, which have been made easy for you to follow." From inside them comes a drink of
varying colors, containing healing for mankind. There is certainly a sign in that for people
who reflect. (Quran, 16:68-69) Sura 16, The Bee (Al-Nahl)

A well known scientist has made the following observation,

"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years
to live?" Albert Einstein

The foraging process begins in a colony by scout bees being sent to search for promising flower
patches. Scout bees move randomly from one patch to another. Having found the patches which
are rated above a certain quality threshold, these scout bees would then deposit their nectar or
pollen and eventually perform a “waggle dance” when they return to the hive [4]. This dance is
essential for colony communication. It is about: the direction to the source, the distance from the
hive, and the quality rating [4, 5]. This information helps the colony to send its bees to the flower
patches precisely, without using guides or maps. While harvesting from a patch, the bees monitor
its food level. This is necessary to decide upon the next waggle dance when they return to the
hive [5]. If the patch is still good enough as a food source, then it will be advertised in the
waggle dance and more bees will be recruited to the particular source [6].

Approximately 75% of the bees from a colony forage within one kilometer while the young field
bees only fly within the first few hundred meters. The longer foraging time is, the greater would
be the nectar availability.

Monkey
Primates have a highly developed brain, usually living in groups with their own complex social
systems. Their high intelligence allows them to adapt their behavior successfully to different
environments. Included in this group are monkeys, apes and humans.

Fig. 4. Monkey.

According to A. Mucherino and O. Seref [8], when the monkey climbs up a tree for the first
time, it they can only choose the branches of the tree in a random way, because it they do not
have any previous experience climbing on that tree. However, when the monkey climbs up the
tree again, it they would try to follow the paths that would lead them to good food, allowing the
monkeys to discover a set of connected branches of the tree in which there are good food
resources. When the monkey discovers a better solution, they remember it. Later, on their way
down, the monkeys mark the corresponding branches, and then use these marks for deciding
which branches to climb up again. This marking strategy reflects the monkey’s intentions to
focus on a part of a tree where it has already found some good solutions. When the monkey
decides to restart climbing up, it encounters some previously visited branches on its way up. It
then climbs these branches again. The monkey chooses between one of the two tree branches
based on the marks it left before. Naturally, the monkey has greater probability of choosing a
branch leading to better solutions, and this probability increases with the quality of the solution
the branch leads to.

Firefly

Fireflies (lightning bugs) use their bioluminescence to attract mates or prey. They live in moist
places under debris on the ground, others beneath bark and decaying vegetation.

Firefly Algorithm (FA) was developed by Xin-She Yang [9] at Cambridge University in 2007.
It uses the following three idealized rules: 1) all fireflies are unisex so that a firefly will be
attracted to other fireflies regardless of their sex; 2) Attractiveness is proportional to their
brightness; thus for any two flashing fireflies, the less brighter will move towards the brighter
one. The attractiveness is proportional to the brightness and they both decrease as their distance
increases. If there is no brighter firefly than a particular one, it will move randomly; 3) the
brightness of a firefly is affected or determined by the landscape of the objective function. For
maximization problem, the brightness can simply be proportional to the value of the objective
function.

Flies

In the Holy Quran, 22, verse 73, it was stated:

Mankind! An example has been made, so listen to it carefully. Those whom you call upon
besides God are not even able to create a single fly, even if they were to join together to do it.
And if a fly steals something from them, they cannot get it back. How feeble are both the seeker
and the sought!

The main idea behind this algorithm is based upon Drosophila’s biological behavior; 1) The fly
hunts for food and a mate within a one to two month lifespan [10], 2) The fly flies with Lévy
flight motion [11, 12, 13, 14]. 3) It smells the potential location (attractiveness), 4) Then tastes, if
not good (fitness / profitability), rejects and goes to another location. To the fly, attractiveness is
not necessarily profitable [21, 22, 10, 15]. 5) While foraging or mating, the fly also sends and
receives a message with its friends about it foods and mates [16, 17, 18, 19, and 20].

The main steps of the algorithm are given in flowchart Fig. 8. When a fly decides to go for
hunting, It will fly randomly (with Lévy flight motion) to find the location guided by a particular
odor. While searching, the fly also sends and receives information from its neighbors and makes
comparison about the best current location and fitness. If a fly has found its spot, it will then
identify the fitness by taste. If the location no longer exists or the taste is ‘bitter’, the fly will go
off searching again. The fly will stay around at the most profitable area, sending, receiving and
comparing information at the same time. The total number of flies depends upon the number of
sources. However, since most of the flies are near to the food source location, then the next
generation of flies is considered to be already closeby to the potential food location.

The extraordinary thing about the entire animal inspired metaheuristic algorithms is that, they all
share one thing in common; in a short period of time, animals try to optimize their searching
space while hunting for food and mates. As humans, we are no different i.e. we also deal with
optimization our daily life, such as budgeting our expenditure, traveling from one place to
another, or even looking for the perfect ‘soulmate’. However, the only difference is the way in
which we carry out our deals, as compared to the creatures. The existence of too ‘many neurons’
or disturbances make our decision become more complex, even though the solution might just be
right in front of our eyes! Man always indulge in the quest for perfection, which may be prove to
be quite a problem, as our lifespan is not very long, some might say. However, each animal
algorithm has its own list of strengths and weaknesses due to its own ‘natural’ ability.

The word 'Algorithm' or 'Algorizm' is a corruption of his name or the name of the town Khwaarizm ...

Muhammad bin Moosaa Al-Khawaarizmi is considered to be one of the founders of Algebra. The word
‘Algorithm’ or 'Algorizm' is a corruption of his name or the name of the town Khwaarizm (Kheva), in
what is now Uzbekistan, where he was born. He adopted the use of ‘cipher’ (zero), that was devised in
India some centuries earlier, a numeral of fundamental importance, leading up to the so-called
arithmetic of positions and the decimal system. The very word ‘zero’ is a derivative of the Arabic ‘sifr’ or
‘cipher’. His pioneering work on the system of numerals is well known as "Algorithm," or "Algorizm." In
addition to introducing the Arabic numerals, he developed several arithmetical procedures, including
operations on fractions.

Parallel Metaheuristics: A New Class of Algorithms -Parallel Metaheuristics brings together an

international group of experts in parallelism and metaheuristics to provide a much-needed synthesis of
these two fields. Metaheuristic Techniques, Measuring the Performance of Parallel Metaheuristics

Parallel Metaheuristic Models, including Parallel Genetic Algorithms, Parallel Genetic Programming,
Parallel Evolution Strategies, Parallel Ant Colony Algorithms, Parallel Estimation of Distribution
Algorithms, Parallel Scatter Search, Parallel Variable Neighborhood Search, Parallel Simulated Annealing,
Parallel Tabu Search, Parallel GRASP, Parallel Hybrid Metaheuristics, Parallel Multi-Objective
Optimization, and Parallel Heterogeneous Metaheuristics
* Part Three: Theory and Applications, including Theory of Parallel Genetic Algorithms, Parallel
Metaheuristics Applications, Parallel Metaheuristics in Telecommunications, and a final chapter on
Bioinformatics and Parallel Metaheuristics

CALMA: Combinatorial ALgorithms for Military Applications ... J.G.Taylor, "Tabu Search for the Radio
Links Frequency Assignment Problem", Presented in ... "Behaviour of three methods applied to easy and
hard combinatorial problems", ...
CALMA is the name of a research project setting out to determine strengths and weaknesses of a range
of solution approaches to combinatorial problems. The project has been financed by the Ministeries of
Defence of the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom in the EUCLID programme RTP 6-4 as part
of CEPA 6 (Artificial Intelligence). EUCLID stands for EUropean Cooperation for the Long term In
Defence.

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