RT Journal Article T1 A Tutorial On the design, experimentation and application of metaheuristic algorithms to real-World optimization problems A1 Osaba, Eneko A1 Villar-Rodriguez, Esther A1 Del Ser, Javier A1 Nebro, Antonio J. A1 Molina, Daniel A1 LaTorre, Antonio A1 Suganthan, Ponnuthurai N. A1 Coello Coello, Carlos A. A1 Herrera, Francisco AB In the last few years, the formulation of real-world optimization problems and their efficient solution via metaheuristic algorithms has been a catalyst for a myriad of research studies. In spite of decades of historical advancements on the design and use of metaheuristics, large difficulties still remain in regards to the understandability, algorithmic design uprightness, and performance verifiability of new technical achievements. A clear example stems from the scarce replicability of works dealing with metaheuristics used for optimization, which is often infeasible due to ambiguity and lack of detail in the presentation of the methods to be reproduced. Additionally, in many cases, there is a questionable statistical significance of their reported results. This work aims at providing the audience with a proposal of good practices which should be embraced when conducting studies about metaheuristics methods used for optimization in order to provide scientific rigor, value and transparency. To this end, we introduce a step by step methodology covering every research phase that should be followed when addressing this scientific field. Specifically, frequently overlooked yet crucial aspects and useful recommendations will be discussed in regards to the formulation of the problem, solution encoding, implementation of search operators, evaluation metrics, design of experiments, and considerations for real-world performance, among others. Finally, we will outline important considerations, challenges, and research directions for the success of newly developed optimization metaheuristics in their deployment and operation over real-world application environments. SN 2210-6502 YR 2021 FD 2021-07 LA eng NO Osaba , E , Villar-Rodriguez , E , Del Ser , J , Nebro , A J , Molina , D , LaTorre , A , Suganthan , P N , Coello Coello , C A & Herrera , F 2021 , ' A Tutorial On the design, experimentation and application of metaheuristic algorithms to real-World optimization problems ' , Swarm and Evolutionary Computation , vol. 64 , 100888 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.swevo.2021.100888 NO Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier B.V. NO Eneko Osaba, Esther Villar-Rodriguez and Javier Del Ser-would like to thank the Basque Government through EMAITEK and ELKARTEK (ref. 3KIA) funding grants. Javier Del Ser-also acknowledges funding support from the Department of Education of the Basque Government (Consolidated Research Group MATHMODE, IT1294-19). Antonio LaTorre acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science (TIN2017-83132-C2-2-R). Carlos A. Coello Coello acknowledges support from CONACyT grant no. 2016-01-1920 (Investigación en Fronteras de la Ciencia 2016) and from a SEP-Cinvestav grant (application no. 4). Francisco Herrera and Daniel Molina are partially supported by the project DeepSCOP-Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Científica en Big Data 2018, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under project TIN2017-89517-P. DS TECNALIA Publications RD 15 ago 2024