Solving online dynamic time-linkage problems under unreliable prediction

Dynamic time-linkage optimization problems (DTPs) are a special class of dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) with the feature of time-linkage. Time-linkage means that the decisions taken now could influence the problem states in future. Although DTPs are common in practice, attention from the field of evolutionary optimization is little. To date, the prediction method is the major approach to solve DTPs in the field of evolutionary optimization. However, in existing studies, the method of how to deal with the situation where the prediction is unreliable has not been studied yet for the complete Black-Box Optimization (BBO) case. In this paper, the prediction approach EA + predictor, proposed by Bosman, is improved to handle such situation. A stochastic-ranking selection scheme based on the prediction accuracy is designed to improve EA + predictor under unreliable prediction, where the prediction accuracy is based on the rank of the individuals but not the fitness. Experimental results show that, compared with the original prediction approach, the performance of the improved algorithm is competitive. (c) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.