Alternative Generation in Complex Decision Modelling Using a Firefly Algorithm Metaheuristic Approach

Abstract

Decision-making in the “real world” can become dominated by inconsistent performance requirements and incompatible specifications that can be difficult to detect when supporting mathematical programming models are formulated. There are invariably unmodelled elements, not apparent during model construction, which can greatly impact the acceptability of the model's solutions. Consequently, it can frequently prove beneficial to construct a set of options that provide dissimilar approaches to such problems. These alternatives should possess near-optimal objective measures with respect to all known objectives, but be maximally different from each other in terms of their decision variables. The approach for creating maximally different sets of solutions is referred to as modelling-to-generate-alternatives (MGA). This article provides an efficient biologically-inspired algorithm that can generate sets of maximally different alternatives by employing the Firefly Algorithm metaheuristic. The computational efficacy of this MGA approach is demonstrated on a commonly-tested benchmark problem.