Title: A new matrix form genetic encoding for balanced, compact and connected sectorisation through NSGA-II

Authors: Elif Göksu Öztürk; Ana Maria Rodrigues; José Soeiro Ferreira

Addresses: INESC TEC – Technology and Science, Porto, Portugal; FEP.UP – Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal ' INESC TEC – Technology and Science, Porto, Portugal; CEOS.PP, ISCAP, Politechnic of Porto, Porto, Portugal ' INESC TEC – Technology and Science, Porto, Portugal; FEUP – Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Abstract: Sectorisation refers to dividing a whole into smaller parts, the sectors, to facilitate an activity or achieve some goals. The paper proposes a new matrix form genetic encoding system, called matrix form binary grouping (MFBG), specifically designed for sectorisation and related problems. In MFBG representation, the columns and rows represent sectors and nodes, respectively. As a solution procedure, we followed NSGA-II by contemplating adapted measures for three commonly used criteria (equilibrium, compactness, contiguity) for sectorisation problems. The performance of the MFBG within the NSGA-II is tested from two perspectives: 1) through several experiments on the set of instances; 2) by its comparison with the group-oriented genetic encoding system under the grouping GA. Results showed that the MFBG could find good quality solutions and outperforms the GGA. This confirms that the MFBG is an innovative procedure for dealing with sectorisation problems and an excellent contribution as an alternative encoding technique.

Keywords: sectorisation; matrix form genetic encoding; multi-objective optimisation; NSGA-II; multi-criteria; Pareto frontier; performance metrics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCDM.2023.134132

International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making, 2023 Vol.9 No.3, pp.250 - 279

Accepted: 12 Jun 2023
Published online: 11 Oct 2023 *

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