A Survey of Advances in Landscape Analysis for Optimisation

• Published in: Algorithms Vol. 14; no. 2; p. 40
• Main Author: Malan, Katherine Mary
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2021
• Subjects: Algorithms; automated algorithm selection; Biological evolution; error landscape; Evolutionary algorithms; Evolutionary computation; Fitness; fitness landscape; landscape analysis; Machine learning; Neural networks; Optimization; Performance prediction; violation landscape
• ISSN: 1999-4893; 1999-4893
• DOI: 10.3390/a14020040

Fitness landscapes were proposed in 1932 as an abstract notion for understanding biological evolution and were later used to explain evolutionary algorithm behaviour. The last ten years has seen the field of fitness landscape analysis develop from a largely theoretical idea in evolutionary computation to a practical tool applied in optimisation in general and more recently in machine learning. With this widened scope, new types of landscapes have emerged such as multiobjective landscapes, violation landscapes, dynamic and coupled landscapes and error landscapes. This survey is a follow-up from a 2013 survey on fitness landscapes and includes an additional 11 landscape analysis techniques. The paper also includes a survey on the applications of landscape analysis for understanding complex problems and explaining algorithm behaviour, as well as algorithm performance prediction and automated algorithm configuration and selection. The extensive use of landscape analysis in a broad range of areas highlights the wide applicability of the techniques and the paper discusses some opportunities for further research in this growing field.