Editorial

摘要

"Meta-heuristics, in their original definition, are solution methods that orchestrate an interaction between local improvement procedures and higher level strategies to create a process capable of escaping from local optima and performing a robust search of a solution space. Over time, these methods have also come to include any procedures that employ strategies for overcoming the trap of local optimality in complex solution spaces, especially those procedures that utilize one or more neighborhood structures as a means of defining admissible moves to transition from one solution to another, or to build or destroy solutions in constructive and destructive processes." This definition stems from the preface of the handbook of meta-heuristics edited by Glover and Kochenberger [1].