Hybrid Metaheuristics Applied to the Multi-objective Spanning Tree Problem
Multi-objective Spanning Tree Problem, Hybrid Metaheuristics, OWA operator, Experimental Algorithms
The Multi-objective Spanning Tree Problem (MSTP) is an NP-hard extension of the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST). Once the MTSP models several real-world problems in which conflicting objectives need to be optimized simultaneously, it has been extensively studied in the literature and several exact and heuristic algorithms were proposed for it. Besides, over the last years, researchs have showed the considerable performance of algorithms that combine various metaheuristic strategies. They are called hybrid algorithms and previous works successfully applied them to several optimization problems. In this work, five new hybrid algorithms are proposed for two versions of the MSTP: three for the bi-objective version (BiST) based on Pareto dominance and two for the many-objective version based on the ordered weighted average operator (OWA-ST). This research hybridized elements from various metaheuristics. Computational experiments investigated the potential of the new algorithms concerning computational time and solution quality. The results were compared to the state-of-the-art.