Role of Evolutionary Computation in Environmental and Water Resources Systems Analysis

摘要

Since the 1960s, systems analytic methods have played a key role in environmental and water resources planning and management. An array of systematic search procedures as well as statistical methods continues to be the focus of investigation in environmental and water resources systems (EWRS). With the advent of modern and faster computing resources at a high degree of afford-ability, the system simulation models are now able to incorporate more processes and their interactions, resulting in relatively more complex model structures. Therefore, the coupling of simulation models with search methods for optimization have become increasingly challenging. In many cases, complexities that arise from, for example, nonlinearity, discontinuity, and discreteness in modern simulation models, limit the application of traditional search methods, e.g., mathematical programming procedures. Such limitations have been overcome recently by directly coupling the simulation models with heuristic search procedures. While this directly coupled simulation-optimization (S-O) approach is, in general, computationally demanding, it has proven to be a viable approach given cheaper and faster computational resources.