A first multilevel cooperative algorithm for capacitated multicommodity network design

We describe the first multilevel cooperative tabu search for the capacitated multicommodity network design problem. Main design challenges are associated to the specification of the problem instance addressed at each level in cooperation, as well as to the definition of the cooperation operators. The paper proposes a first approach to address these challenges and tests it on a set of well-known benchmark problems. The proposed method appears competitive, particularly when difficult problems with many commodities are considered. Directions and challenges for future research are identified and discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.