Water distribution systems design optimisation using metaheuristics and hyperheuristics

Abstract

The topic of multi-objective water distribution systems (WDS) design optimisation using metaheuristics is investigated, comparing numerous modern metaheuristics, including several multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, an estimation of distribution algorithm and a recent hyperheuristic named AMALGAM (an evolutionary framework for the simultaneous incorporation of multiple metaheuristics), in order to determine which approach is most capable with respect to WDS design optimisation. Novel metaheuristics and variants of existing algorithms are developed, for a total of twenty-three algorithms examined. Testing with respect to eight small-to-large-sized WDS benchmarks from the literature reveal that the four top-performing algorithms are mutually non-dominated with respect to the various performance metrics used. These algorithms are NSGA-II, TAMALGAMJndu, TAMALGAMndu and AMALGAMSndp (the last three being novel variants of AMALGAM). However, when these four algorithms are applied to the design of a very large real-world benchmark, the AMALGAM paradigm outperforms NSGA-II convincingly, with AMALGAMSndp exhibiting the best performance overall.

Key words: Water distribution systems design optimisation, metaheuristic, hyperheuristic.