The paper is concerned with spatial clustering of economic activity and its relation to the spatiality of knowledge creation in interactive learning processes. It questions the view that tacit knowledge transfer is confined to local milieus whereas codified knowledge may roam the globe almost frictionlessly. The paper highlights the conditions under which both tacit and codified knowledge can be exchanged locally and globally. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, the learning processes taking place among actors embedded in a community by just being there dubbed buzz and, on the other, the knowledge attained by investing in building channels of communication called pipelines to selected providers located outside the local milieu. It is argued that the co-existence of high levels of buzz and many pipelines may provide firms located in outward-looking and lively clusters with a string of particular advantages not available to outsiders. Finally, some policy implications, stemming from this argumen...

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Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation

A unified view of metaheuristics This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement efficient algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of applications, from networking and bioinformatics to engineering design, routing, and scheduling. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics and clearly illustrates how to implement the algorithms under a software framework to reuse both the design and code. Throughout the book, the key search components of metaheuristics are considered as a toolbox for: Designing efficient metaheuristics (e.g. local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, ant colonies, bee colonies, artificial immune systems) for optimization problems Designing efficient metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization problems Designing hybrid, parallel, and distributed metaheuristics Implementing metaheuristics on sequential and parallel machines Using many case studies and treating design and implementation independently, this book gives readers the skills necessary to solve large-scale optimization problems quickly and efficiently. It is a valuable reference for practicing engineers and researchers from diverse areas dealing with optimization or machine learning; and graduate students in computer science, operations research, control, engineering, business and management, and applied mathematics.

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Metaheuristics: From Design to Implementation

A multiobjective optimization problem involves several conflicting objectives and has a set of Pareto optimal solutions. By evolving a population of solutions, multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are able to approximate the Pareto optimal set in a single run. MOEAs have attracted a lot of research effort during the last 20 years, and they are still one of the hottest research areas in the field of evolutionary computation. This paper surveys the development of MOEAs primarily during the last eight years. It covers algorithmic frameworks such as decomposition-based MOEAs (MOEA/Ds), memetic MOEAs, coevolutionary MOEAs, selection and offspring reproduction operators, MOEAs with specific search methods, MOEAs for multimodal problems, constraint handling and MOEAs, computationally expensive multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs), dynamic MOPs, noisy MOPs, combinatorial and discrete MOPs, benchmark problems, performance indicators, and applications. In addition, some future research issues are also presented.

Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms: A survey of the state of the art

Evolutionary algorithms often have to solve optimization problems in the presence of a wide range of uncertainties. Generally, uncertainties in evolutionary computation can be divided into the following four categories. First, the fitness function is noisy. Second, the design variables and/or the environmental parameters may change after optimization, and the quality of the obtained optimal solution should be robust against environmental changes or deviations from the optimal point. Third, the fitness function is approximated, which means that the fitness function suffers from approximation errors. Fourth, the optimum of the problem to be solved changes over time and, thus, the optimizer should be able to track the optimum continuously. In all these cases, additional measures must be taken so that evolutionary algorithms are still able to work satisfactorily. This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of the related work within a unified framework, which has been scattered in a variety of research areas. Existing approaches to addressing different uncertainties are presented and discussed, and the relationship between the different categories of uncertainties are investigated. Finally, topics for future research are suggested.

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Evolutionary optimization in uncertain environments-a survey

In this Chapter, we imagine a decision maker (or a group of experts) trying to establish or examine fair procedures to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view.

Multiple criteria decision making

Early History of MCDM Developments in MCDM in the 1970's Developments in MCDM in the 1980's Developments in MCDM in the 1990's Developments in MCDM after 2000 MCDM Conferences MCDM Society Traditions Biographies of Leading MCDM Scholars.

Multiple Criteria Decision Making: From Early History to the 21st Century

Fuzzy versus statistical linear regression

We propose an evolutionary metaheuristic for multiobjective combinatorial optimization problems that interacts with the decision maker (DM) to guide the search effort toward his or her preferred solutions. Solutions are presented to the DM, whose pairwise comparisons are then used to estimate the desirability or fitness of newly generated solutions. The evolutionary algorithm comprising the skeleton of the metaheuristic makes use of selection strategies specifically designed to address the multiobjective nature of the problem. Interactions with the DM are triggered by a probabilistic evaluation of estimated fitnesses, while memory structures with indifference thresholds restrict the presentation of solutions resembling those that have already been rejected. The algorithm has been tested on a number of random instances of the Multiobjective Knapsack Problem (MOKP) and the Multiobjective Spanning Tree Problem (MOST). Simulation results indicate that the algorithm requires only a small number of comparisons to be made for satisfactory solutions to be found.

Murat Köksalan

Papers

Multiple Criteria Decision Making: From Early History to the 21st Century

Fuzzy versus statistical linear regression

An Interactive Evolutionary Metaheuristic for Multiobjective Combinatorial Optimization

Multiple Criteria Decision Making in the New Millennium

An interactive approach for placing alternatives in preference classes