Natural Computing (2018) 17:585–609

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-018-9685-y (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV)

A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals

and evolutionary methods
Michael T. M. Emmerich1 • André H. Deutz1

Published online: 31 May 2018

 The Author(s) 2018

Abstract
In almost no other field of computer science, the idea of using bio-inspired search paradigms has been so useful as in
solving multiobjective optimization problems. The idea of using a population of search agents that collectively approxi-
mate the Pareto front resonates well with processes in natural evolution, immune systems, and swarm intelligence. Methods
such as NSGA-II, SPEA2, SMS-EMOA, MOPSO, and MOEA/D became standard solvers when it comes to solving
multiobjective optimization problems. This tutorial will review some of the most important fundamentals in multiobjective
optimization and then introduce representative algorithms, illustrate their working principles, and discuss their application
scope. In addition, the tutorial will discuss statistical performance assessment. Finally, it highlights recent important trends
and closely related research fields. The tutorial is intended for readers, who want to acquire basic knowledge on the
mathematical foundations of multiobjective optimization and state-of-the-art methods in evolutionary multiobjective
optimization. The aim is to provide a starting point for researching in this active area, and it should also help the advanced
reader to identify open research topics.

Keywords Multiobjective optimization  Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms  Decomposition-based MOEAs 

Indicator-based MOEAs  Pareto-based MOEAs  Performance assessment

1 Introduction needed objectives (van der Horst et al. 2012; Rosenthal and
Borschbach 2017).
Consider making investment choices for an industrial There are countless other examples where multiobjec-
process. On the one hand the profit should be maximized tive optimization has been applied or is recently considered
and on the other hand environmental emissions should be as a promising field of study. Think, for instance, of the
minimized. Another goal is to improve safety and quality minimization of different types of error rates in machine
of life of employees. Even in the light of mere economical learning (false positives, false negatives) (Yevseyeva et al.
decision making, just following the legal constraints and 2013; Wang et al. 2015), the optimization of delivery costs
minimizing production costs can take a turn for the worse. and inventory costs in logistics(Geiger and Sevaux 2011),
Another application of multiobjective optimization can the optimization of building designs with respect to health,
be found in the medical field. When searching for new energy efficiency, and cost criteria (Hopfe et al. 2012).
therapeutic drugs, obviously the potency of the drug is to In the following, we consider a scenario where given the
be maximized. But also the minimization of synthesis costs solutions in some space of possible solutions, the so-called
and the minimization of unwanted side effects are much- decision space which can be evaluated using the so-called
objective functions. These are typically based on com-
putable equations but might also be the results of physical
& Michael T. M. Emmerich experiments. Ultimately, the goal is to find a solution on
m.t.m.emmerich@liacs.leidenuniv.nl which the decision maker can agree, and that is optimal in
André H. Deutz some sense.
a.h.deutz@liacs.leidenuniv.nl When searching for such solutions, it can be interesting
1
to pre-compute or approximate a set of interesting solutions
LIACS, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

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586 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

that reveal the essential trade-offs between the objectives. this order. The decision maker has to state additional
This strategy implies to avoid so-called Pareto dominated preferences, e.g., weights of the objectives, prior to the
solutions, that is solutions that can improve in one objec- optimization.
tive without deteriorating the performance in any other 2. A posteriori: A partial order is defined on the objective
objective. The Pareto dominance is named after Vilfredo space Rm , typically the Pareto order, and the algorithm
Pareto, an Italian economist. As it was earlier mentioned by searches for the minimal set concerning this partial
Francis Y.Edgeworth, it is also sometimes called Edge- order over the set of all feasible solutions. The user has
worth-Pareto dominance (see Ehrgott 2012 for some his- to state his/her preferences a posteriori, that is after
torical background). To find or to approximate the set of being informed about the trade-offs among non-
non-dominated solutions and make a selection among them dominated solutions.
is the main topic of multiobjective optimization and multi- 3. Interactive (aka Progressive): The objective functions
criterion decision making. Moreover, in case the set of non- and constraints and their prioritization are refined by
dominated solutions is known in advance, to aid the deci- requesting user feedback on preferences at multiple
sion maker in selecting solutions from this set is the realm points in time during the execution of an algorithm.
of decision analysis (aka decision aiding) which is also part In the sequel, the focus will be on a posteriori approaches
of multi-criterion decision making. to multiobjective optimization. The a priori approach is
Definition 1 Multiobjective Optimization. Given m ob- often supported by classical single-objective optimization
jective functions f1 : X ! R; . . .; fm : X ! R which map a algorithms, and we refer to the large body of the literature
decision space X into R, a multiobjective optimization that exists for such methods. The a posteriori approach,
problem (MOP) is given by the following problem however, requires interesting modifications of theorems
statement: and optimization algorithms—in essence due to the use of
partial orders and the desire to compute a set of solutions
minimize f1 ðxÞ; . . .; minimize fm ðxÞ; x 2 X ð1Þ
rather than a single solution. Interactive methods are highly
Remark 1 In general, we would demand m [ 1 when we interesting in real-world applications, but they typically
talk about multiobjective optimization problems. More- rely upon algorithmic techniques used in a priori and a
over, there is the convention to call problems with large m, posteriori approaches and combine them with intermediate
not multiobjective optimization problems but many-ob- steps of preference elicitation. We will discuss this topic
jective optimization problems (see Fleming et al. 2005; Li briefly at the end of the tutorial.
et al. 2015). The latter problems form a special, albeit
important case of multiobjective optimization problems.
2 Related work
Remark 2 Definition 1 does not explicitly state constraint
functions. However, in practical applications constraints There is a multiple of introductory articles that preceded
have to be handled. Mathematical programming techniques this tutorial:
often use linear or quadratic approximations of the feasible
space to deal with constraints, whereas in evolutionary • In Zitzler et al. (2004) a tutorial on state-of-the-art
multiobjective optimization constraints are handled by evolutionary computation methods in 2004 is provided
penalties that increase the objective function values in including Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm
proportion to the constraint violation. Typically, penalized Version 2 (SPEA2) (Zitzler et al. 2001), Non-domi-
objective function values are always higher than objective nated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) (Deb
function values of feasible solutions. As it distracts the et al. 2002), Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm
attention from particular techniques in MOP solving, we (MOGA) (Fonseca and Fleming 1993) and Pareto-
will only consider unconstrained problems. For strategies Archived Evolution Strategy (PAES) (Knowles and
to handle constraints, see Coello Coello (2013). Corne 2000) method. Indicator-based methods and
modern variants of decomposition based methods, that
Considering the point(s) in time when the decision our tutorial includes, were not available at that time.
maker interacts or provides additional preference infor- • In Deb (2008) an introduction to earlier multiobjective
mation, one distinguishes three general approaches to optimization methods is provided, and also in the form
multiobjective optimization (Miettinen 2012): of a tutorial. The article contains references to early
1. A priori: A total order is defined on the objective books in this field and key articles and also discusses
space, for instance by defining a utility function Rm ! applications.
R and the optimization algorithm finds a minimal point
(that is a point in X ) and minimum value concerning

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A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 587

• Derivative-free methods for multiobjective optimiza- – reflexive, if and only if 8x 2 X : ðx; xÞ 2 R,

tion, including evolutionary and direct search methods, – irreflexive, if and only if 8x 2 X; ðx; xÞ 62 R,
are discussed in Custódio et al. (2012). – symmetric, if and only if 8x 2 X : 8y 2 X : ðx; yÞ
• On conferences such as GECCO, PPSN, and EMO 2 R , ðy; xÞ 2 R,
there have been regularly tutorials and for some of – asymmetric, if and only if 8x 2 X : 8y 2 X : ðx; yÞ
these slides are available. A very extensive tutorial 2 R ) ðy; xÞ 62 R,
based on slides is the citable tutorial by Brockhoff – antisymmetric, if and only if 8x 2 X : 8y 2 X :
(2017). ðx; yÞ 2 R ^ ðy; xÞ 2 R ) x ¼ y,
Our tutorial is based on teaching material and a reader for a – transitive, if and only if 8x 2 X : 8y 2 X : 8z 2 X :
course on Multiobjective Optimization and Decision ðx; yÞ 2 R ^ ðy; zÞ 2 R ) ðx; zÞ 2 R.
Analysis at Leiden University, The Netherlands (http://
moda.liacs.nl). Besides going into details of algorithm Remark 3 Sometimes we will also write xRy for
design methodology, it also discusses foundations of mul- ðx; yÞ 2 R.
tiobjective optimization and order theory. In the light of Now we can define different types of orders:
recent developments on hybrid algorithms and links to
computational geometry, we considered it valuable to not Definition 3 Pre-order, Partial Order, Strict Partial Order.
only cover evolutionary methods but also include the basic A binary relation R is said to be a
principles from deterministic multiobjective optimization – pre-order (aka quasi-order), if and only if it is transitive
and scalarization-based methods in our tutorial. and reflexive,
– partial order, if and only if it is an antisymmetric pre-
order,
3 Order and dominance – strict partial order, if and only if it is irreflexive and
transitive
For the notions we discuss in this section a good reference
is Ehrgott (2005). Remark 4 Note that a strict partial order is necessarily
The concept of Pareto dominance is of fundamental asymmetric (and therefore also anti-symmetric).
importance to multiobjective optimization, as it allows to
compare two objective vectors in a precise sense. That is, Proposition 1 Let X be a set and D ¼ fðx; xÞjx 2 Xg be
they can be compared without adding any additional the diagonal of X.
preference information to the problem definition as stated – If R is an anti-symmetric binary relation on X, then any
in Definition 1. subset of R is also an anti-symmetric binary relation.
In this section, we first discuss partial orders, pre-orders, – If R is irreflexive, then (R is asymmetric if and only if
and cones. For partial orders on Rm there is an important R is antisymmetric). Or: the relation R is asymmetric if
geometric way of specifying them with cones. We will and only if R is anti-symmetric and irreflexive.
define the Pareto order (aka Edgeworth-Pareto order) on – If R is a pre-order on X, then
Rm . The concept of Pareto dominance is of fundamental fðx; yÞ j ðx; yÞ 2 R and ðy; xÞ 62 Rg, denoted by Rstrict ,
importance for multiobjective optimization, as it allows to is transitive and irreflexive. In other words, Rstrict is a
compare two objective vectors in a precise sense (see strict partial order associated to the pre-order R.
Definition 5 below). That is, comparisons do not require – If R is a partial order on X, then R n D is irreflexive and
adding any additional preference information to the prob- transitive. In other words, R n D is a strict partial
lem definition as stated in Definition 1. This way of com- order. Moreover R n D is anti-symmetric (or
parison establishes a pre-order (to be defined below) on the asymmetric).
set of possible solutions (i.e., the decision space), and it is – If R is a pre-order on X, then (R n D is a strict partial
possible to search for the set of its minimal elements—the order if and only if R is asymmetric).
efficient set.
As partial orders and pre-orders are special binary Remark 5 In general, if R is a pre-order, then R n D does
relations, we digress with a discussion on binary relations, not have to be transitive. Therefore, in general, R n D will
orders, and pre-orders. not be a strict partial order.
Definition 2 Properties of Binary Relations. Given a set X, Definition 4 Minimal Element. A minimal element x 2 X
a binary relation on X—that is a set R with R  X  X—is in a (strictly) partially ordered set (X, R) is an element for
said to be which there does not exist an x0 2 X with x0 Rx and x0 6¼ x.

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(In case, the order R is a strict partial order, x0 Rx implies Definition 7 Strict Component Order on Rm . Let
x0 6¼ x). x; y 2 Rm . We say x is less than y in the strict component
order, denoted by x\y, if and only if xi \yi ; i ¼ 1; . . .; m.
Definition 5 Pareto Dominance. Given two vectors in the
objective space, that is yð1Þ 2 Rm and yð2Þ 2 Rm , then the Definition 8 (Weakly) Efficient Point, Efficient Set, and
point yð1Þ 2 Rm is said to Pareto dominate the point yð2Þ (in Pareto Front.
symbols yð1Þ Pareto yð2Þ Þ, if and only if – The minimal elements of the Pareto order f on X are
8i 2 f1; . . .; mg :
ð1Þ ð2Þ
yi  yi and 9j 2 f1; . . .; mg :
ð1Þ ð2Þ
yj \yj : called efficient points.
– The subset X E of all efficient points in X is called the
ð1Þ ð2Þ efficient set.
In words, in case that y Pareto y the first vector is not
– Let us denote the set of attainable objective vectors
worse in each of the objectives and better in at least one
with Y :¼ fðX Þ. Then the minimal elements of the
objective than the second vector.
Pareto order on Y are called the non-dominated or
Proposition 2 The Pareto order Pareto on the objective Pareto optimal objective vectors. The subset of all non-
space Rm is a strict partial order. Moreover ðPareto [ DÞ dominated objective vectors in Y is called the Pareto
is a partial order. We denote this by Pareto or also by  if front. We denote it with Y N .
the context provides enough clarity. – A point x 2 X is called weakly efficient if and only if
there does not exist u 2 X such that fðuÞ\fðxÞ.
In multiobjective optimization we have to deal with two
Moreover, fðxÞ is called weakly non-dominated.
spaces: The decision space, which comprises all candidate
solutions, and the objective space which is identical to Rm
Remark 7 Clearly, fðX E Þ ¼ Y N .
and it is the space in which the objective function vectors
are represented. The vector-valued function f ¼
3.1 Cone orders
ðf1 ; . . .; fm Þ> maps the decision space X to the objective
space Rm . This mapping and the Pareto order on Rm as The Pareto order is a special case of a cone order, which
defined in Definition 5 can be used to define a pre-order on are orders defined on vector spaces. Defining the Pareto
the decision space X as follows. order as a cone order gives rise to geometrical interpreta-
Definition 6 Pre-order on Search Space. Let x1 ; x2 2 X . tions. We will introduce definitions for Rm , although cones
The solution x1 is said to Pareto dominate the solution x2 if can be defined on more general vector spaces, too. The
and only if fðx1 Þ Pareto fðx2 Þ. Notation: x1 Pareto domi- binary relations in this subsection are subsets of Rm  Rm
nates x2 is denoted by x1 f x2 . and the cones are subsets of Rm .

Remark 6 The binary relation f on X is a strict partial Definition 9 Non-trivial Cone. A set C  Rm with ; 6¼
order on X and ðf [fðx; xÞ j x 2 X gÞ is a partial order on C 6¼ Rm is called a non-trivial cone, if and only if
X . Note that the pre-order R associated to Pareto via f ( 8a 2 R; a [ 0; 8c 2 C : ac 2 C.
i.e., x1 Rx2 if and only if fðx1 Þ Pareto fðx2 Þ ) is, in general, Remark 8 In the sequel when we say cone we mean non-
not asymmetric and therefore, in general, trivial cone.
f 6¼ R n fðx; xÞ j x 2 X g.
Definition 10 Minkowski Sum. The Minkowski sum (aka
Sometimes we need the notion of the so called strict algebraic sum) of two sets A 2 Rm and B 2 Rm is defined
component order on Rm and its accompanying notion of as A B :¼ fa þ b j a 2 A ^ b 2 Bg. Moreover we define
weak non-dominance. aA ¼ faaj a 2 Ag.

f2 f2 f2

y⊕C y ⊕ R2 0
2 C 2 2
1 1 y 1 y
f1 f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 (0, 0) 1 2 (0, 0) 1 2

Fig. 1 Example of a cone C(left), Minkowski sum of a singleton fyg and C (middle), and Minkowski sum of fyg and the cone R2 0 . The latter is
equal to the non-negative quadrant from which the origin is deleted, see also Definition 13

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A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 589

Remark 9 For an illustration of the cone notion and Proposition 3 Let C be a cone and RC its associated
examples of Minkowski sums see Fig. 1. binary relation (i.e., RC ¼ fðx; yÞ j y x 2 Cg) . Then the
following statements hold.
– RC is translation and positive multiplication invariant,
Definition 11 The binary relation, RC , associated to the
– RC is anti-symmetric if and only if C is pointed,
cone C. Given a cone C the binary relation associated to this
– RC is transitive if and only if C is convex, and moreover,
cone, notation RC , is defined as follows: 8x 2 Rm : 8y 2
– RC is reflexive if and only if 0 2 C.
Rm : ðx; yÞ 2 RC if and only if y 2 fxg C.
A similar statement can be made if we go in the other
Remark 10 It is clear that for any cone C the associated
direction, i.e.:
binary relation is translation invariant (i.e, if
8u 2 Rm : ðx; yÞ 2 RC ) ðx þ u; y þ uÞ 2 RC ) and also Proposition 4 Let R be a translation and positive multi-
multiplication invariant by any positive real (i.e., plication invariant binary relation and the CR the associ-
8a [ 0 : ðx; yÞ 2 RC ) ðax; ayÞ 2 RC ). Conversely, given ated cone (i.e., CR ¼ fy x j ðx; yÞ 2 Rg). Then the
a binary relation R which is translation invariant and following statements hold.
multiplication invariant by any positive real, the set CR :¼
– CR is a cone,
fy x j ðx; yÞ 2 Rg is a cone. The above two operations are
– R is anti-symmetric if and only if CR is pointed,
inverses of each other, i.e., to a cone C one associates a
– R is transitive if and only if CR is convex, and moreover,
binary relation RC which is translation invariant and mul-
– R is reflexive if and only if 0 2 CR .
tiplication invariant by any positive real, and the associated
cone of RC is C, and conversely starting from a binary In the following definition some important subsets in
relation R which is translation invariant and multiplication Rm ; m 1 are introduced.
invariant by any positive real one obtains the cone CR and
Definition 13 Let m be a natural number bigger or equal
the binary relation associated to this cone is R. In short,
to 1. The non-negative orthant (aka hyperoctant) of Rm ,
there is a natural one to one correspondence between cones
denoted by Rm 0 is the set of all elements in Rm whose
and translation invariant and multiplication-invariant-by-
coordinates are non-negative. Furthermore, the zero-dom-
positive-reals binary relations on Rm .
inated orthant, denoted by Rm 0 , is the set Rm 0 n f0g.
Note that for a positive multiplication invariant relation
R the set CR ¼ fy x j xRy g is a cone. We restrict our Analogously we define the non-positive orthant of Rm ,
attention to relations which are translation invariant as well denoted by R  0 , as the set of elements in Rm the coordi-
in order to get the above mentioned bijection between nates of which are non-positive. Furthermore, the set of
cones and relations. elements in Rm which dominate the zero vector 0, denoted
Also note if a positive multiplication invariant and by Rm m
0 , is the set R  0 n f0g. The set of positive reals is
translation invariant relation R is such that denoted by R [ 0 and the set of non-negative reals is
; 6¼ R 6¼ Rm  Rm , then the associated cone CR is non- denoted by R 0 .
trivial. Relations associated to non-trivial cones are non- Remark 12 The sets defined in the previous definition are
empty and not equal to all of Rm  Rm . cones.
Remark 11 In general the binary relation RC associated to Proposition 5 The Pareto order Pareto on Rm is given by
a cone is not reflexive nor transitive nor anti-symmetric. the cone order with cone Rm 0 , also referred to as the
For instance, the binary relation RC is reflexive if and only Pareto cone.
if 0 2 C. The following definitions are needed in order to
state for which cones the associated binary relation is anti- Remark 13 As Rm 0 is a pointed and convex cone, the
symmetric and/or transitive. associated binary relation is irreflexive, anti-symmetric and
transitive (see Proposition 3). Of course, this can be veri-
Definition 12 Pointed cone and convex cone. A cone C is fied more directly.
pointed if and only if C \ C  f0g where C¼
f c j c 2 Cg and C is convex if and only if 8c1 2 C; c2 2 The reason to view the Pareto order as derived from a
C; 8a such that 0  a  1 : ac1 þ ð1 aÞc2 2 C. cone is that it gives the opportunity to study this order more
geometrically. For instance, the definition and many of the
With these definitions we can specify for which cones properties of the very important hypervolume indicator (to
the associated relation is transitive and/or anti-symmetric: be defined later) readily become intuitive. A reason for
deviating from the Pareto cone could be to add constraints
to the trade-off between solutions. Moreover, see later for a

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discussion, the more general cones turned out to be very of small finite decision spaces, efficient solutions can be
useful in generalizing the hypervolume indicator and identified without much effort. In the case of large com-
influence the distribution of points in the approximation set binatorial or continuous search spaces, however, opti-
to the Pareto front. mization algorithms are needed to find them.
Alternatives to the standard Pareto order on Rm can be
easily imagined and constructed by using pointed, convex
cones. The alternatives can be used, for instance, in pref- 4 Scalarization techniques
erence articulation.
Classically, multiobjective optimization problems are often
3.2 Time complexity of basic operations solved using scalarization techniques (see, for instance,
on ordered sets Miettinen 2012). Also in the theory and practice of evo-
lutionary multiobjective optimization scalarization plays an
Partial orders do not have cycles. Let R be a partial order. It important role, especially in the so-called decomposition
is easy to see that R does not have cycles. We show that the based approaches.
associated strict partial order does not have cycles. That is, In brief, scalarization means that the objective functions
there do not exist are aggregated (or reformulated as constraints), and then a
ðb1 ; b2 Þ 2 R n D; ðb2 ; b3 Þ 2 R n D;    ; ðbt 1 ; b1 Þ 2 R n D constrained single-objective problem is solved. By using
different parameters of the constraints and aggregation
where D is the diagonal. For suppose such bi ; i ¼ 1;    ; t function, it is possible to obtain different points on the
1 can be found with this property. Then by transitivity of Pareto front. However, when using such techniques, certain
R n D (see Proposition 1), we get ðb1 ; bt 1 Þ 2 R n D. By caveats have to be considered. In fact, one should always
assumption, we have ðbt 1 ; b1 Þ 2 R n D. Again by transi- ask the following two questions:
tivity, we get ðb1 ; b1 Þ 2 R n D which is a contradiction. In 1. Does the optimization of scalarized problems result in
other words, R does not have cycles. (The essence of the efficient points?
above argument is, that any strict partial order does not 2. Can we obtain all efficient points or vectors on the
have cycles.) The absence of cycles for (strict) partial Pareto front by changing the parameters of the
orders gives rise to the following proposition. scalarization function or constraints?
Proposition 6 Let S be a (strict) partially ordered set. We will provide four representative examples of scalar-
Then any finite, non-empty subset of S has minimal ele- ization approaches and analyze whether they have these
ments (with respect to the partial order). In particular, any properties.
finite, non-empty subset Y  Rm has minimal elements with
respect to the Pareto order Pareto . Also any, finite non- 4.1 Linear weighting
empty subset X  X has minimal elements with respect to
f . A simple means to scalarize a problem is to attach non-
negative weights (at least one of them positive) to each
The question arises: How fast can the minimal elements
objective function and then to minimize the weighted sum
be obtained?
of objective functions. Hence, the multiobjective opti-
Proposition 7 Given a finite partially ordered set ðX; Þ, mization problem is reformulated to:
the set of minimal elements can be obtained in time Hðn2 Þ. Definition 14 Linear Scalarization Problem. The linear
Proof A double nested loop can check non-domination for scalarization problem (LSP) of an MOP using a weight
each element. For the lower bound consider the case that vector w 2 Rm 0 , is given by
all elements in X are incomparable. Only in this case is X
m

X the minimal set. It requires time Xðn2 Þ to compare all minimize wi fi ðxÞ; x 2 X :
i¼1
pairs (Daskalakis et al. 2011). h
Proposition 8 The solution of an LSP is on the Pareto
Fortunately, in case of the Pareto ordered set
front, no matter which weights in Rm 0 are chosen.
ðX; Pareto Þ, one can find the minimal set faster. The
algorithm suggested by Kung et al. (1975) combines a Proof We show that the solution of the LSP cannot be a
dimension sweep algorithm with a divide and conquer dominated point, and therefore, if it exists, it must neces-
algorithm and finds the minimal set in time Oðnðlog nÞÞ for sarily be a non-dominated point. Consider a solution of the
d ¼ 2 and in time Oðnðlog nÞd 2 Þ for d 3. Hence, in case LSP against some weights w 2 Rm 0 , say x and suppose

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A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 591

this minimal point is dominated. Then there exists an the weighted Chebychev distance to a reference point as an
objective vector y 2 fðX Þ with 8i 2 f1; . . .; mg yi  fi ðx Þ objective function.
and for some index j 2 f1; . . .; mg it holds that yj \fj ðx Þ.
Pm Pm Definition 17 Chebychev Scalarization Problem. The
Hence, it must also hold that i¼1 wi yi \ i¼1 wi fi ðx Þ, Chebychev scalarization problem (CSP) of an MOP using a
which contradicts the assumption that x is minimal. h
weight vector k 2 Rm 0 , is given by
In the literature the notion of convexity (concavity) of minimize max ki jfi ðxÞ zi j; x 2 X ;
Pareto fronts is for the most part not defined formally. i2f1;...;mg
Possible formal definitions for convexity and concavity are
where z is a reference point, i.e., the ideal point defined as
as follows.
zi ¼ inf x2X fi ðxÞ with i ¼ 1;    ; m.
Definition 15 Convex Pareto front. A Pareto front is
Proposition 10 Let us assume a given set of mutually non-
convex if and only if Y N Rm 0 is convex.
dominated solutions in Rm (e.g., a Pareto front). Then for
Definition 16 Concave Pareto front. A Pareto front is every non-dominated point p there exists a set of weights
concave if and only if Y N Rm 0 is convex. for a CSP, that makes this point a minimizer of the CSP
provided the reference point z is properly chosen (i.e., the
Proposition 9 In case of a convex Pareto front, for each vector p z either lies in the positive or negative
solution in Y N there is a solution of a linear scalarization orthant).
problem for some weight vector w 2 Rm 0 .
Practically speaking, Proposition 10 ensures that by
changing the weights, all points of the Pareto front can, in
If the Pareto front is non-convex, then, in general, there principle, occur as minimizers of CSP. For the two
can be points on the Pareto front which are the solutions of example Pareto fronts, the minimizers of the Chebychev
no LSP. Practically speaking, in the case of concave Pareto scalarization function are points on the iso-height lines of
fronts, the LSP will tend to give only extremal solutions, the smallest CSP function value which still intersect with
that is, solutions that are optimal in one of the objectives. the Pareto front. Clearly, such points are potentially found
This phenomenon is illustrated in Fig. 2, where the tan- in convex parts of Pareto fronts as illustrated in Fig. 3 (left)
gential points of the dashed lines indicate the solution as well as in concave parts (right).However, it is easy to
obtained by minimizing an LSP for different weight choi- construct examples where a CSP obtains minimizers in
ces (colors). In the case of the non-convex Pareto front weakly dominated points (see Definition 8). Think for
(Fig. 2, right), even equal weights (dark green) cannot lead instance of the case fðX Þ ¼ ½0; 12 . In this case all points on
to a solution in the middle part of the Pareto front. Also, by
solving a series of LSPs with minimizing different the line segment ð0; 0Þ> ; ð0; 1Þ> and on the line segment
weighted aggregation functions, it is not possible to obtain ð0; 0Þ> ð1; 0Þ> are solutions of some Chebychev scalariza-
this interesting part of the Pareto front. tion. (The ideal point is 0 ¼ ð0; 0Þ> , one can take as
weights (0, 1) for the first scalarization, and (1, 0) for the
4.1.1 Chebychev scalarization second scalarization; the Pareto front is equal to fð0; 0Þ> g).
In order to prevent this, the augmented Chebychev
Another means of scalarization, that will also uncover scalarization provides a solution. It reads:
points in concave parts of the Pareto front, is to formulate

Fig. 2 Linear scalarization

problems with different weights
for (1) convex Pareto fronts, and f2 f2
(2) concave Pareto fronts
y∗

3 3
y∗
y∗
2 y∗ 2 y∗ ∗
y

1 1

f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 3 (0, 0) 1 2 3

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592 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

Fig. 3 Chebychev scalarization

problems with different weights
for (1) convex Pareto fronts, and f2 f2
(2) concave Pareto fronts
y∗
y∗
3 3 y∗
y∗
2
y∗
2 y∗

1 1

f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 3 (0, 0) 1 2 3

Fig. 4 Re-formulation of f2 f2
multiobjective optimziation
problems as single-objective
constraint handling optimization
problems 3 3
y∗
 y∗
2 2
d
1 1

f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 3 (0, 0) r 1 2 3

X
n difficult to choose an appropriate range for the  values, if
minimize max ki fi ðxÞ þ  fi ðxÞ; x 2 X ; ð2Þ there is no prior knowledge of the location of the Pareto
i2f1;...;mg
i¼1
front in Rm .
where  is a sufficiently small, positive constant.
4.1.3 Boundary intersection methods
4.1.2 -constraint method
Another often suggested way to find an optimizer is to
A rather straightforward approach to turn a multiobjective search for intersection points of rays with the attained
optimization problem into a constraint single-objective subset fðX Þ (Jaszkiewicz and Słowiński 1999). For this
optimization problem is the -constraint method. method, one needs to choose a reference point in Rm , say r,
which, if possible, dominates all points in the Pareto front.
Definition 18 –constraint Scalarization. Given a MOP,
Alternatively, in the Normal Boundary Intersection method
the –constraint scalarization is defined as follows. Given
(Das and Dennis 1998) the rays can emanate from a line (in
m 1 constants 1 2 R; . . .; m 1 2 R,
the bi-objective case) or an m 1 dimensional hyperplane,
minimize f1 ðxÞ; subject to g1 ðxÞ  1 ; . . .; gm 1 ðxÞ  m 1 ; in which case lines originate from different evenly spaced
reference points (Das and Dennis 1998). Then the follow-
where f1 ; g1 ; . . .; gm 1 constitute the m components of ing problem is solved:
vector function f of the multiobjective optimization prob-
lem (see Definition 1). Definition 19 Boundary Intersection Problem. Let d 2
Rm 0 denote a direction vector and r 2 Rm denote the ref-
erence vector. Then the boundary intersection problem is
The method is illustrated in Fig. 4 (left) for 1 ¼ 2:5 for formulated as:
a biobjective problem. Again, by varying the constants
1 2 R; . . .; m 1 2 R, one can obtain different points on
the Pareto front. And again, among the solutions weakly
dominated solutions may occur. It can, moreover, be

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minimize t; conditions and for which all objective functions are convex
in some open -ball B ðxÞ around x.
subject to
ðaÞ r þ td fðxÞ ¼ 0; Remark 14 The equation in the Fritz–John Condition
ðbÞ x 2 X ; and typically does not result in a unique solution. For an n-
dimensional decision space X we have n þ 1 equations and
ðcÞ t 2 R 0
we have m þ n unknowns (including the k multipliers).
Hence, in a non-degenerate case, the solution set is of
dimension m 1.
Constraints (a) and (b) in the above problem formulation
enforce that the point is on the ray and also that there exists It is possible to use continuation and homotopy methods
a pre-image of the point in the decision space. Because t is to obtain all the solutions. The main idea of continuation
minimized, we obtain the point that is closest to the ref- methods is to find a single solution of the equation system
erence point in the direction of d. This method allows some and then to expand the solution set in the neighborhood of
intuitive control on the position of resulting Pareto front this solution. To decide in which direction to expand, it is
points. Excepting rare degenerate cases, it will obtain necessary to maintain an archive, say A, of points that have
points on the boundary of the attainable set fðX Þ. However, already been obtained. To obtain a new point xnew in the
it also requires an approximate knowledge of the position neighborhood of a given point from the archive x 2 A the
of the Pareto front. Moreover, it might result in dominated homotopy method conducts the following steps:
points if the Pareto front is not convex. The method is 1. Using the implicit function theorem a tangent space at
illustrated in Fig. 4 (left) for a single direction and refer- the current point is obtained. It yielded an m 1
ence point. dimensional hyperplane that is tangential to fðxÞ and
used to obtain a predictor. See for the implicit function
theorem, for instance, Krantz and Parks (2003).
5 Numerical algorithms 2. A point on the hyperplane in the desired direction is
obtained, thereby avoiding regions that are already
Many of the numerical algorithms for solving multiobjec- well covered in A.
tive optimization problems make use of scalarization with 3. A corrector is computed minimizing the residual
varying parameters. It is then possible to use single-ob- P
jj ki fi ðxÞjj.
jective numerical optimization methods for finding differ- 4. In case the corrector method succeeded to obtain a new
ent points on the Pareto front. point in the desired neighborhood, the new point is
Besides these, there are methods that focus on solving added to the archive. Otherwise, the direction is saved
the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions. These methods aim (to avoid trying it a second time).
for covering all solutions to the typically underdetermined
nonlinear equation system given by these condition. Again, See Hillermeier (2001) and Schütze et al. (2005) for
for the sake of clarity and brevity, in the following treat- examples and more detailed descriptions. The continuation
ment, we will focus on the unconstrained case, noting that and homotopy methods require the efficient set to be
the full Karush-Kuhn-Tucker and Fritz-John conditions connected. Moreover, they require points to satisfy certain
also feature equality and inequality constraints (Kuhn and regularity conditions (local convexity and differentiability).
Tucker 1951). Global multiobjective optimization research is still a
very active field of research. There are some promising
Definition 20 Local Efficient Point. A point x 2 X is directions, such as subdivision techniques (Dellnitz et al.
locally efficient, if there exists  2 R [ 0 such that 2005), Bayesian global optimization (Emmerich et al.
6 9y 2 B ðxÞ : y f x and x 6¼ y, where B ðxÞ denotes the 2016), and Lipschitz optimization (Žilinskas 2013). How-
open -ball around x. ever, these require the decision space to be of low
Theorem 1 Fritz–John Conditions. A neccessary condi- dimension.
tion for x 2 X to be locally efficient is given by Moreover, there is active research on derivative-free
methods for numerical multiobjective optimization. Direct
X
m X
m
9k 0: ki rfi ðxÞ ¼ 0 and ki ¼ 1: search techniques have been devised, for instance, Custó-
i¼1 i¼1 dio et al. (2011), and by Audet et al. (2010). For a sum-
mary of derivative-free methods, see Custódio et al.
Theorem 2 Karush–Kuhn–Tucker Conditions. A point
(2012).
x 2 X is locally efficient, if it satisfies the Fritz–John

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594 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

6 Evolutionary multiobjective optimization spaces. Whereas the selection operators stay the same, the
variation operators (mutation, recombination) must be
Evolutionary algorithms are a major branch of bio-inspired adapted to the representations of solutions in the decision
search heuristics, which originated in the 1960ties and are space.
widely applied to solve combinatorial and non-convex There are currently three main paradigms for MOEA
numerical optimization problems. In short, they use para- designs. These are:
digms from natural evolution, such as selection, recombi- 1. Pareto based MOEAs: The Pareto based MOEAs use a
nation, and mutation to steer a population (set) of two-level ranking scheme. The Pareto dominance
individuals (decision vectors) towards optimal or near-op- relation governs the first ranking and contributions of
timal solutions (Bäck 1996). points to diversity is the principle of the second level
Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) gen- ranking. The second level ranking applies to points that
eralize this idea, and typically they are designed to grad- share the same position in the first ranking. NSGA-II
ually approach sets of Pareto optimal solutions that are (see Deb et al. 2002) and SPEA2 (see Zitzler and
well-distributed across the Pareto front. As there are—in Thiele 1999) are two popular algorithms that fall into
general—no single-best solutions in multiobjective opti- this category.
mization, the selection schemes of such algorithms differ 2. Indicator based MOEAs: These MOEAs are guided by
from those used in single-objective optimization. First an indicator that measures the performance of a set, for
MOEAs were developed in the 1990ties—see, e.g., Kur- instance, the hypervolume indicator or the R2 indica-
sawe (1990) and Fonseca and Fleming (1993), but since tor. The MOEAs are designed in a way that improve-
around the year 2001, after the first book devoted exclu- ments concerning this indicator determine the selection
sively to this topic was published by Deb (2001), the procedure or the ranking of individuals.
number of methods and results in this field grew rapidly. 3. Decomposition based MOEAs: Here, the algorithm
With some exceptions, the distinction between different decomposes the problem into several subproblems,
classes of evolutionary multiobjective optimization algo- each one of them targeting different parts of the Pareto
rithms is mainly due to the differences in the paradigms front. For each subproblem, a different parametrization
used to define the selection operators, whereas the choice (or weighting) of a scalarization method is used.
of the variation operators is generic and dependent on the MOEA/D and NSGA-III are well-known methods in
problem. As an example, one might consider NSGA-II (see this domain.
Deb et al. 2002) as a typical evolutionary multiobjective
optimization algorithm; NSGA-II can be applied to con- In this tutorial, we will introduce typical algorithms for
tinuous search spaces as well as to combinatorial search each of these paradigms: NSGA-II, SMS-EMOA, and

Algorithm 1 NSGA-II Algorithm

1: initialize population P0 ⊂ X µ
2: while not terminate do
3: {Begin variate}
4: Qt ← ∅
5: for all i ∈ {1, . . . , μ} do
6: (x(1) , x(2) ) ← select mates(Pt ) {select two parent individuals x(1) ∈ Pt and x(2) ∈
Pt }
(i)
7: rt ← recombine(x(1) , x(2) )
(i)
8: qt ← mutate(r)
(i)
9: Qt ← Qt ∪ {qt }
10: end for
11: {End variate}
12: {Selection step, select μ-”best” out of (Pt ∪ Qt ) by a two step procedure:}
13: (R1 , ..., R ) ← non-dom sort(f , Pt ∪ Qt )
14: Find the element of the partition, Riµ , for which the sum of the cardinalities |R1 | +
i µ
· · ·+|Riµ | is for the first time ≥ μ. If |R1 |+· · ·+|Riµ | = μ, Pt+1 ← ∪i=1 Ri , otherwise
determine set H containing μ − (|R1 | + · · · + |Riµ −1 |) elements from Riµ with the
µ i −1
highest crowding distance and Pt+1 ← (∪i=1 Ri ) ∪ H.
15: {End of selection step.}
16: t←t+1
17: end while
18: return Pt

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Fig. 5 Illustration of non- f2 f2

dominated sorting (left) and
y (9)
crowding distance (right)
y (1) y (5) y (1)
3 y (6) y (8) 3

2 y (2) 2 y (2)
y (3) y (7) y (3)
1 y (4) 1 y (4)
y (5)
f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 3 (0, 0) 1 2 3

MOEA/D. We will discuss important design choices, and two levels. First, non-dominated sorting is performed. This
how and why other, similar algorithms deviate in these ranking solely depends on the Pareto order and does not
choices. depend on diversity. Secondly, individuals which share the
same rank after the first ranking are then ranked according
6.1 Pareto based algorithms: NSGA-II to the crowding distance criterion which is a strong
reflection of the diversity.
The basic loop of NSGA-II (Deb et al. 2002) is given by Let NDðPÞ denote the non-dominated solutions in some
Algorithm 1. population. Non-dominated sorting partitions the popula-
tions into subsets (layers) based on Pareto non-dominance
Firstly, a population of points is initialized. Then the and it can be specified through recursion as follows.
following generational loop is repeated. This loop consists
R1 ¼NDðPÞ ð3Þ
of two parts. In the first, the population undergoes a vari-
ation. In the second part, a selection takes place which Rkþ1 ¼NDðP n [ki¼1 Ri Þ; k ¼ 1; 2; . . . ð4Þ
results in the new generation-population. The generational
loop repeats until it meets some termination criterion, As in each step of the recursion at least one solution is
which could be convergence detection criterion (cf. Wag- removed from the population, the maximal number of
ner et al. 2009) or the exceedance of a maximal compu- layers is |P|. We will use the index ‘ to denote the highest
tational budget. non-empty layer. The rank of the solution after non-dom-
In the variation part of the loop k offspring are gener- inated sorting is given by the subindex k of Rk . It is clear
ated. For each offspring, two parents are selected. Each one that solutions in the same layer are mutually incomparable.
of them is selected using binary tournament selection, that The non-dominated sorting procedure is illustrated in
is drawing randomly two individuals from Pt and selecting Fig. 5 (upper left). The solutions are ranked as follows
the better one concerning its rank in the population. The R1 ¼ fyð1Þ ; yð2Þ ; yð3Þ ; yð4Þ g, R2 ¼ fyð5Þ ; yð6Þ ; yð7Þ g, R3 ¼
parents are then recombined using a standard recombina- fyð8Þ ; yð9Þ g.
tion operator. For real-valued problems simulated binary Now, if there is more than one solution in a layer, say R,
crossover (SBX) is used (see Deb and Argawal 1995). a secondary ranking procedure is used to rank solutions
Then the resulting individual is mutated. For real-valued within that layer. This procedure applies the crowding
problem polynomial mutation (PM) is used (see Mateo and distance criterion. The crowding distance of a solution x 2
Alberto 2012). This way, k individuals are created, which R is computed by a sum over contributions ci of the i-th
are all combinations or modifications of individuals in Pt . objective function:
Then the parent and the offspring populations are merged li ðxÞ :¼ maxðffi ðyÞjy 2 R n fxg ^ fi ðyÞ  fi ðxÞg [ f 1gÞ
into Pt [ Qt .
ð5Þ
In the second part, the selection part, the l best indi-
viduals of Pt [ Qt with respect to a multiobjective ranking ui ðxÞ :¼ minðffi ðyÞjy 2 R n fxg ^ fi ðyÞ fi ðxÞg [ f1gÞ
are selected as the new population Ptþ1 . ð6Þ
Next we digress in order to explain the multiobjective
ranking which is used in NSGA-II. The key ingredient of ci ðxÞ :¼ui li ; i ¼ 1; . . .; m ð7Þ
NSGA-II that distinguishes it from genetic algorithms for The crowding distance is now given as:
single-objective optimization, is the way the individuals
are ranked. The ranking procedure of NSGA-II consists of

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596 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

1X m individual depends on how many other individuals it

cðxÞ :¼ ci ðxÞ; x 2 R ð8Þ dominates and by how many other individuals dominate it.
m i¼1
Moreover, clustering serves as a secondary ranking crite-
For m ¼ 2 the crowding distances of a set of mutually rion. Both operators have been refined in SPEA2 (Zitzler
non-dominated points are illustrated in Fig. 5 (upper right). et al. 2001), and also it features a strategy to maintain an
In this particular case, they are proportional to the archive of non-dominated solutions. The Multiobjective
perimeter of a rectangle that just is intersecting with the Micro GA.
neighboring points (up to a factor of 14). Practically Coello and Pulido (2001) is an algorithm that uses a very
speaking, the value of li is determined by the nearest small population size in conjunction with an archive.
neighbor of x to the left according to the i-coordinate, and Finally, the Differential Evolution Multiobjective Opti-
li is equal to the i-th coordinate of this nearest neighbor, mization (DEMO) (Robic and Filipic 2005) algorithm
similarly the value of ui is determined by the nearest combines concepts from Pareto-based MOEAs with a
neighbor of x to the right according to the i-coordinate, variation operator from differential evolution, which leads
and ui is equal to the i-th coordinate of this right nearest to improved efficiency and more precise results in partic-
neighbor. The more space there is around a solution, the ular for continuous problems.
higher is the crowding distance. Therefore, solutions with a
high crowding distance should be ranked better than those 6.2 Indicator-based algorithms: SMS-EMOA
with a low crowding distance in order to maintain diversity
in the population. This way we establish a second order A second algorithm that we will discuss is a classical
ranking. If the crowding distance is the same for two algorithm following the paradigm of indicator-based mul-
points, then it is randomly decided which point is ranked tiobjective optimization. In the context of MOEAs, by a
higher. performance indicator (or just indicator), we denote a
Now we explain the non-dom_sort procedure in line 13 scalar measure of the quality of a Pareto front approxi-
of Algorithm 1 the role of P is taken over by Pt \ Qt : In mation. Indicators can be unary, meaning that they yield an
order to select the l best members of Pt [ Qt according to absolute measure of the quality of a Pareto front approxi-
the above described two level ranking, we proceed as mation. They are called binary, whenever they measure
follows. Create the partition R1 ; R2 ;    ; R‘ of Pt [ Qt as how much better one Pareto front approximation is con-
described above. For this partition one finds the first index cerning another Pareto front approximation.
il for which the sum of the cardinalities jR1 j þ    þ jRil j is The SMS-EMOA (Emmerich et al. 2005) uses the
for the first time l. If jR1 j þ    þ jRil j ¼ l, then set hypervolume indicator as a performance indicator. Theo-
li retical analysis attests that this indicator has some favor-
Ptþ1 to [i¼1 Ri , otherwise determine the set H containing
able properties, as the maximization of it yields
l ðjR1 j þ    þ jRil 1 jÞ elements from Ril with the
approximations of the Pareto front with points located on
highest crowding distance and set the next generation- the Pareto front and well distributed across the Pareto front.
li 1
population, Ptþ1 , to ð[i¼1 Ri Þ [ H. The hypervolume indicator measures the size of the dom-
Pareto-based Algorithms are probably the largest class inated space, bound from above by a reference point.
of MOEAs. They have in common that they combine a For an approximation set A  Rm it is defined as
ranking criterion based on Pareto dominance with a follows:
diversity based secondary ranking. Other common algo-
HIðAÞ ¼ Volðfy 2 Rm : y Pareto r ^ 9a 2 A : a Pareto ygÞ
rithms that belong to this class are as follows. The Mul-
tiobjective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) (Fonseca and ð9Þ
Fleming 1993), which was one of the first MOEAs. The Here, Vol ð:Þ denotes the Lebesgue measure of a set in
PAES (Knowles and Corne 2000), which uses a grid par- dimension m. This is length for m ¼ 1, area for m ¼ 2,
titioning of the objective space in order to make sure that volume for m ¼ 3, and hypervolume for m 4. Practically
certain regions of the objective space do not get too speaking, the hypervolume indicator of A measures the size
crowded. Within a single grid cell, only one solution is of the space that is dominated by A. The closer points move
selected. The Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm to the Pareto front, and the more they distribute along the
(SPEA) (Zitzler and Thiele 1999) uses a different criterion Pareto front, the more space gets dominated. As the size of
for ranking based on Pareto dominance. The strength of an

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Algorithm 2 SMS-EMOA
initialize P0 ⊂ X µ
while not terminate do
{Begin variate}
(x(1) , x(2) ) ← select mates(Pt ) {select two parent individuals x(1) ∈ Pt and x(2) ∈ Pt }
ct ← recombine(x(1) , x(2) )
qt ← mutate(ct )
{End variate}
{Begin selection}
Pt+1 ← selectf (Pt ∪ {qt }) {Select subset of size μ with maximal hypervolume indicator
from P ∪ {qt }}
{End selection}
t←t+1
end while
return Pt

Fig. 6 Illustration of 2-D f2 f2

hypervolume (top left), 2-d r r
hypervolume contributions (top
y (1) y (1)
right), 3-D hypervolume
3 Y ⊕ R2 0 3
(bottom left), and 3-D
hypervolume contributions
(bottom right) 2 y (2) 2 y (2)
y (3) y (3)
1 y (4) 1 y (4)
y (5) y (5)
f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 3 (0, 0) 1 2 3

y (4) y (4)
f3 f3

y (3) y (3)
y (2) y (2)
y (1) y (1)
y (5) y (5)

f1 f2 f1 f2

the dominated space is infinite, it is necessary to bound it. remains unchanged, the hypervolume indicator of Pt can
For this reason, the reference point r is introduced. only grow or stay equal with an increasing number of
The SMS-EMOA seeks to maximize the hypervolume iterations t.
indicator of a population which serves as an approximation Next, the details of the selection procedure will be dis-
set. This is achieved by considering the contribution of cussed. If all solutions in Pt are non-dominated, the
points to the hypervolume indicator in the selection pro- selection of a subset of maximal hypervolume is equivalent
cedure. Algorithm 2 describes the basic loop of the stan- to deleting the point with the smallest (exclusive) hyper-
dard implementation of the SMS-EMOA. volume contribution. The hypervolume contribution is
The algorithm starts with the initialization of a popula- defined as:
tion in the search space. Then it creates only one offspring
DHIðy; YÞ ¼ HIðYÞ HIðY n fygÞ
individual by recombination and mutation. This new indi-
vidual enters the population, which has now size l þ 1. To An illustration of the hypervolume indicator and
reduce the population size again to the size of l, a subset of hypervolume contributions for m ¼ 2 and, respectively,
size l with maximal hypervolume is selected. This way as m ¼ 3 is given in Fig. 6. Efficient computation of all
long as the reference point for computing the hypervolume hypervolume contributions of a population can be achieved

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598 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

in time Hðl log lÞ for m ¼ 2 and m ¼ 3 (Emmerich and scaling of the objective functions. Although the hypervol-
Fonseca 2011). For m ¼ 3 or 4, fast implementations are ume indicator has been very prominent in IBEAs, there are
described in Guerreiro and Fonseca (2017). Moreover, for some algorithms using other indicators, notably this is the
fast logarithmic-time incremental updates for 2-D an R2 indicator (Trautmann et al. 2013), which features an
algorithm is described in Hupkens and Emmerich (2013). ideal point as a reference point, and the averaged Hausdorff
For achieving logarithmic time updates in SMS-EMOA, distance (Dp indicator) (Rudolph et al. 2016), which
the non-dominated sorting procedure was replaced by a requires an aspiration set or estimation of the Pareto front
procedure, that sorts dominated solutions based on age. For which is dynamically updated and used as a reference. The
m [ 2, fast incremental updates of the hypervolume indi- idea of aspiration sets for indicators that require knowledge
cator and its contributions were proposed in for more than of the ‘true’ Pareto front also occurred in conjunction with
two dimensions (Guerreiro and Fonseca 2017). the a-indicator (Wagner et al. 2015), which generalizes the
In case dominated solutions appear the standard imple- approximation ratio in numerical single-objective opti-
mentation of SMS-EMOA partitions the population into mization. The Portfolio Selection Multiobjective Opti-
layers of equal dominance ranks, just like in NSGA-II. mization Algorithm (POSEA) (Yevseyeva et al. 2014) uses
Subsequently, the solution with the smallest hypervolume the Sharpe Index from financial portfolio theory as an
contribution on the worst ranked layer gets discarded. indicator, which applies the hypervolume indicator of
SMS-EMOA typically converges to regularly spaced singletons as a utility function and a definition of the
Pareto front approximations. The density of these approx- covariances based on their overlap. The Sharpe index
imations depends on the local curvature of the Pareto front. combines the cumulated performance of single individuals
For biobjective problems, it is highest at points where the with the covariance information (related to diversity), and
slope is equal to 45 (Auger et al. 2009). It is possible to it has interesting theoretical properties.
influence the distribution of the points in the approximation
set by using a generalized cone-based hypervolume indi- 6.3 Decomposition-based algorithm: MOEA/D
cator. These indicators measure the hypervolume domi-
nated by a cone-order of a given cone, and the resulting Decomposition-based algorithms divide the problem into
optimal distribution gets more uniform if the cones are subproblems using scalarizations based on different
acute, and more concentrated when using obtuse cones (see weights. Each scalarization defines a subproblem. The
Emmerich et al. 2013). subproblems are then solved simultaneously by dynami-
Besides the SMS-EMOA, there are various other indi- cally assigning and re-assigning points to subproblems and
cator-based MOEAs. Some of them also use the hyper- exchanging information from solutions to neighboring sub-
volume indicator. The original idea to use the hypervolume problems.
indicator in an MOEA was proposed in the context of The method defines neighborhoods on the set of these
archiving methods for non-dominated points. Here the subproblems based on the distances between their aggre-
hypervolume indicator was used for keeping a bounded- gation coefficient vectors. When optimizing a subproblem,
size archive (Knowles et al. 2003). Besides, in an early information from neighboring subproblems can be
work hypervolume-based selection which also introduced a exchanged, thereby increasing the efficiency of the search
novel mutation scheme, which was the focus of the paper as compared to methods that independently solve the
(Huband et al. 2003). The term Indicator-based Evolu- subproblems.
tionary Algorithms (IBEA) (Zitzler and Künzli 2004) was MOEA/D (Zhang and Li 2007) is a very commonly used
introduced in a paper that proposed an algorithm design, in decomposition based method, that succeeded a couple of
which the choice of indicators is generic. The hypervol- preceding algorithms based on the idea of combining
ume-based IBEA was discussed as one instance of this decomposition, scalarization and local search(Ishibuchi
class. Its design is however different to SMS-EMOA and and Murata 1996; Jin et al. 2001; Jaszkiewicz 2002). Note
makes no specific use of the characteristics of the hyper- that even the early proposed algorithms VEGA (Schaffer
volume indicator. The Hypervolume Estimation Algorithm 1985) and the vector optimization approach of Kursawe
(HypE) (Bader and Zitzler 2011) uses a Monte Carlo (see Kursawe 1990) can be considered as rudimentary
Estimation for the hypervolume in high dimensions and decomposition based approaches, where these algorithms
thus it can be used for optimization with a high number of obtain a problem decomposition by assigning different
objectives (so-called many-objective optimization prob- members of a population to different objective functions.
lems). MO-CMA-ES (Igel et al. 2006) is another hyper- These early algorithmic designs used subpopulations to
volume-based MOEA. It uses the covariance-matrix solve different scalarized problems. In contrast, in MOEA/
adaptation in its mutation operator, which enables it to
adapt its mutation distribution to the local curvature and

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D one population with interacting neighboring individuals is denoted with B(i). Given these preliminaries, the MOEA/
is applied, which reduces the complexity of the algorithm. D algorithm—using Chebychev scalarization— reads as
Typically, MOEA/D works with Chebychev scalariza- described in Algorithm 3.
tions, but the authors also suggest other scalarization Note the following two remarks about MOEA/D: (1)
methods, namely scalarization based on linear weighting— Many parts of the algorithm are kept generic. Here, generic
which however has problems with approximating non- options are recombination, typically instantiated by stan-
convex Pareto fronts—and scalarization based on boundary dard recombination operators from genetic algorithms, and
intersection methods—which requires additional parame- local improvement heuristic. The local improvement
ters and might also obtain strictly dominated points. heuristic should find a solution in the vicinity of a given
MOEA/D evolves a population of individuals, each solution that does not violate constraints and has a rela-
individual xðiÞ 2 Pt being associated with a weight vector tively good performance concerning the objective function
kðiÞ . The weight vectors kðiÞ are evenly distributed in the values. (2) MOEA/D has additional statements to collect all
search space, e.g., for two objectives a possible choice is: non-dominated solutions it generates during a run in an
external archive. Because this external archive is only used
kðiÞ ¼ ðkk i ; ki Þ> ; i ¼ 0; . . .; l.
in the final output and does not influence the search
The i-th subproblem gðxjki ; z Þ is defined by the Che- dynamics, it can be seen as a generic feature of the algo-
bychev scalarization function (see also Eq. 2): rithm. In principle, an external archive can be used in all
Xm  
ðiÞ EMOAs and could therefore also be done in SMS-EMOA
gðxjkðiÞ ; z Þ ¼ max fkj jfj ðxÞ zj jg þ  fj ðxÞ zj and NSGA-II. To make comparisons to NSGA-II and
j2f1;...;mg
j¼1
SMS-EMOA easier, we omitted the archiving strategy in
ð10Þ the description.
The main idea is that in the creation of a new candidate Recently, decomposition-based MOEAs became very
solution for the i-th individual the neighbors of this indi- popular, also because they scale well to problems with
vidual are considered. A neighbor is an incumbent solution many objective functions. The NSGA-III (Deb and Jain
2014) algorithm is specially designed for many-objective
optimization and uses a set of reference points that is
dynamically updated in its decomposition. Another

Algorithm 3 MOEA/D
input: Λ = {λ(1) , ..., λ(µ) } {weight vectors}
input: z∗ : reference point for Chebychev distance
initialize P0 ⊂ X µ
initialize neighborhoods B(i) by collecting k nearest weight vectors in Λ for each λ(i)
while not terminate do
for all i ∈ {1, ..., μ} do
Select randomly two solutions x(1) , x(2) in the neighborhood B(i).
y ← Recombine x(1) , x(2) by a problem specific recombination operator.
y ← Local problem specific, heuristic improvement of y, e.g. local search, based on
the scalarized objective function g(x|λ(i) , z∗ ) .
if g(y |λ(i) , z∗ ) < g(x(i) |λ(i) , z∗ ) then
x(i) ← y
end if
Update z∗ , if neccessary, i.e, one of its component is larger than one of the corre-
sponding components of f (x(i) ).
end for
t←t+1
end while
return Pt

of a subproblem with similar weight vectors. The neigh- decomposition based technique is called Generalized
borhood of i-th individual is the set of k subproblems, for Decomposition (Giagkiozis et al. 2014). It uses a mathe-
so predefined constant k, that is closest to kðiÞ in the matical programming solver to compute updates, and it was
Euclidean distance, including the i-th subproblem itself. It shown to perform well on continuous problems. The
combination of mathematical programming and decom-
position techniques is also explored in other, more novel,
hybrid techniques, such as Directed Search (Schütze et al.

123
600 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

Fig. 7 In the left picture, the set f2 f2

of points denoted by blue
squares is better than (.) the set
consisting of the red-circle
points. Also in the right picture ◦ ◦
the set consisting of blue ◦ ◦
squares is better than the set of ◦ ◦
red-circle points—in this case . .
.. ..
the intersection of the two sets is ◦
non-empty 2 2 ◦
1 1
f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 ... (0, 0) 1 2 ...

2016), which utilizes the Jacobian matrix of the vector- in Rm . We say that A is better than B if and only if every
valued objective function (or approximations to it) to find b 2 B is weakly dominated by at least one element a 2 A
promising directions in the search space, based on desired and A 6¼ B. Notation: A.B.
directions in the objective space.
In Fig. 7 examples are given of the case of one set being
better than another and in Fig. 8 examples are given of the
case that a set is not better than another.
7 Performance assessment This relation on sets has been used in Zitzler et al.
(2003) to classify performance indicators for Pareto fronts.
In order to make a judgement (that is, gain insight into the
To do so, they introduced the notion of completeness and
advantages and disadvantages) of multiobjective evolu-
compatibility of these indicators with respect to the set
tionary (or for that matter also deterministic) optimizers we
relation ‘is better than’.
need to take into account (1) the computational resources
used, and (2) the quality of the produced result(s). Definition 23 Unary Set Indicator. A unary set indicator is
The current state of the art of multiobjective optimiza- a mapping from finite subsets of the objective space to the
tion approaches are mainly compared empirically though set of real numbers. It is used to compare (finite) approx-
theoretical analyses exist (see, for instance, the conver- imations to the Pareto front.
gence results described in Rudolph and Agapie (2000),
Definition 24 Compatibility of Unary Set Indicators
Beume et al. (2011) albeit for rather simple problems as
concerning the ‘is better than’ order on Approximation
more realistic problems elude mathematical analysis.
Sets. A unary set indicator I is compatible concerning the
The most commonly computational resource which is
‘is better than’ or .-relation if and only if
taken into account is the computation time which is very
IðAÞ [ IðBÞ ) A.B. A unary set indicator I is complete
often measured implicitly by counting fitness function
with respect to the ‘is better than’ or .-relation if and only
evaluations—in this respect, there is no difference with
if A.B ) IðAÞ [ IðBÞ. If in the last definition we replace[
single-objective optimization. In contrast to single-objec-
by then the indicator is called weakly-complete.
tive optimization, in multiobjective optimization, a close
distance to a (Pareto) optimal solution is not the only thing The hypervolume indicator and some of its variations
required but also good coverage of the entire Pareto front. are complete. Other indicators compared in the paper
As the results of multiobjective optimization algorithms are (Zitzler et al. 2003) are weakly-complete or not even
(finite) approximation sets to the Pareto front we need to be weakly-complete. It has been proven in the same paper that
able to say when one Pareto front approximation is better no unary indicator exists that is complete and compatible at
than another. One good way to define when one approxi- the same time. Moreover for the hypervolume indicator
mation set is better than another is as in Definition 22 (see HI it has be shown that HI ðAÞ [ HI ðBÞ ) :ðB.AÞ.
Zitzler et al. 2003). The latter we call weakly-compatible.
In all the discussions of the hypervolume indicator, the
Definition 21 Approximation Set of a Pareto Front. A
assumption is that all points of the approximation sets
finite subset A of Rm is an approximation set of a Pareto
under consideration dominate the reference point.
front if and only if A consists of mutually (Pareto) non-
Recently, variations of the hypervolume indicator have
dominated points.
been proposed—the so-called free hypervolume indica-
Definition 22 Comparing Approximation Sets of a Pareto tors—that do not require the definition of a reference point
Front. Let A and B be approximation sets of a Pareto front

123
A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 601

Fig. 8 In each of the pictures, f2 f2

the set consisting of the blue
square points is not better than
the set consisting of the red
circle points. Clearly, in each of ◦ ◦
the two pictures on the right the ◦
set consisting of the red circle ◦
◦
points is better than the set .. ..
. . ◦
consisting of the blue square ◦
points 2 2 ◦
◦
1 1
f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 ... (0, 0) 1 2 ...
f2 f2

◦
◦
◦
◦
.. ..
. . ◦
2 ◦ 2 ◦
◦
1 1
f1 f1
(0, 0) 1 2 ... (0, 0) 1 2 ...

and are complete and weakly-compatible for all approxi- properties hold: A.B ) I ðB; AÞ [ 0, the second
mation sets (Zitzler et al. 2003). notable property is as follows:
Besides unary indicators, one has introduced binary I ðA; BÞ  0 and I ðB; AÞ [ 0 ) A.B. These two proper-
indicators (see Riquelme et al. 2015). The most used ones ties show that based on the binary -indicator it is possible
are unary indicators followed up by binary indicators. For to decide whether or not A is better than B. In contrast, the
binary indicators, the input is a pair of approximation sets knowledge of the hypervolume indicator on the sets A and
and the output is again a real number. Here the goal is to B does not allow to decide whether or not A is better than
determine which of the two approximation sets is the better B.
one (and how much better it is)1. Binary indicators can also Some of indicators are useful in case there is knowledge
be used, if the true Pareto front is known, e.g., in bench- or complete knowledge about the Pareto front. For instance
marking on test problems. A common binary indicator is (see Rudolph et al. 2016), it has been suggested to compute
the binary -indicator. In order to introduce this indicator the Hausdorff distance (or variations of it) of an approxi-
we first define for each d 2 R a binary relation on the mation set to the Pareto front. Moreover, the binary -
points in Rm . indicator can be transformed into a complete unary indi-
cator in case the second input is the known Pareto front—
Definition 25 d-domination. Let d 2 R and let a 2 Rm
note that this indicator needs to be minimized.
and b 2 Rm . We say that a d-dominates b (notation:
Another useful way to learn about the behavior of
a d b) if and only if ai  bi þ d; i ¼ 1; . . .; m.
evolutionary multiobjective algorithms is the attainment
Next, we can define the binary indicator I . curve approach (see da Fonseca et al. 2001). The idea is to
generalize the cumulative distribution function and for the
Definition 26 The Binary Indicator I . Given two
study of algorithms it is approximated empirically. The
approximation sets A and B, then
distribution is defined on the set of (finite) approximation
I ðA; BÞ :¼ inf d2R f8b 2 B 9a 2 A such that a d bg.
sets of the Pareto front. For each point in the objective
Clearly for a fixed B the smaller I ðA; BÞ is the better the space Rm it is the probability that the Pareto front
approximation set A is relative to B. The following approximation attains this point (that is, it is either one
point in the approximation set, or it is dominated by some
1
Conceivably one can can introduce k-ary indicators. To our point in the approximation set). Formally, it reads
knowledge, so far they have not been used in multiobjective
optimization.

123
602 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

f2 levels than 0.5 in order to get an optimistic or respectively

a pessimistic assessment of the performance.
In Fig. 9 an example of the median attainment curve is
◦
× shown. We assume that the four approximation sets are
provided by some algorithm.
◦
×
8 Recent topics in multiobjective
◦ optimization
×

◦ Recently, there are many new developments in the field of

..
. multiobjective optimization. Next we will list some of the
2
most important trends.
1
×
f1
(0, 0) 1 2 ... 8.1 Many-objective optimization
Fig. 9 The median attainment curve for the case of four approxima-
tion sets; one approximation set consists of the blue squares, the Optimization with more than 3 objectives is currently ter-
second set consists of points denoted by brown triangles, the third med many-objective optimization [see, for instance, the
consists of the red circles, and the fourth consists of points denoted by survey (Li et al. 2015)]. This is to stress the challenges one
black crosses; the darker gray the region is the more approximation
sets dominate it. The median attainment curve is the black polygonal
meets when dealing with more than 3 objectives. The main
line reasons are:
1. problems with many objectives have a Pareto front
which cannot be visualized in conventional 2D or 3D
plots instead other approaches to deal with this are
Pðað1Þ  z _ að2Þ  z _ . . . _ aðkÞ  zÞ;
needed;
where A ¼ fað1Þ ; að2Þ ; . . .; aðkÞ g is the approximation set and 2. the computation time for many indicators and selection
z 2 Rm . In other words P is the probability of an algorithm schemes become computationally hard, for instance,
to find at least one solution which attains the goal z in a time complexity of the hypervolume indicator compu-
single run. We define the attainment function aA : Rm ! tation grows super-polynomially with the number of
½0; 1 associated to the approximation set A as follows: objectives, under the assumption that P 6¼ NP;
3. last but not least the ratio of non-dominated points
aA ðzÞ :¼ Pðað1Þ  z _ að2Þ  z _ . . . _ aðkÞ  zÞ: tends to increase rapidly with the number of objectives.
For instance, the probability that a point is non-
This function can be approximated by
dominated in a uniformly distributed set of sample
1X s
points grows exponentially fast towards 1 with the
as ðzÞ :¼ I ðAi ; zÞ;
s i¼1 number of objectives.
In the field of many-objective optimization different tech-
where A1 ; . . .; As are the outcome approximation sets of an
niques are used to deal with these challenges. For the first
algorithm in s runs of the algorithm and I :
challenge, various visualization techniques are used such as
ð set of approximation sets Þ  Rm ! f0; 1g is a func-
projection to lower dimensional spaces or parallel coordi-
tion which associates to an approximation set and a vector
nate diagrams. In practice, one can, if the dimension is only
in Rm the value 1 in case the vector is a member of the
slightly bigger than 3, express the coordinate values by
approximation set or if some element of the approximation
colors and shape in 3D plots.
set dominates it, otherwise the value is 0. For m ¼ 2 or 3
Naturally, in many-objective optimization indicators
we can plot the boundaries where this function changes its
which scale well with the number of objectives (say
value. These are the attainment curves (m ¼ 2Þ and
polynomially) are very much desired. Moreover, decom-
attainment surfaces (m ¼ 3). In particular the median
position based approaches are typically preferred to indi-
attainment curve/surface gives a good summary of the
cator based approaches.
behavior of the optimizer. It is the boundary where the
The last problem requires, however, more radical devi-
function changes from a level below 0.5 to a level higher
ations from standard approaches. In many cases, the
than 0.5. Alternatively one can look at lower and higher
reduction of the search space achieved by reducing it to the
efficient set is not sufficiently adequate to allow for

123
A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 603

subsequent decision making because too many alternatives simulations, and finite element computations of mechanical
remain. In such cases, a stricter order than the Pareto order structures. To deal with such problems techniques that need
is required which requires additional preference knowl- only a limited number of function evaluations have been
edge. To elicit preference knowledge, interactive methods devised. A common approach is to learn a surrogate model
often come to the rescue. Moreover, in some cases, of the objective functions by using all available past
objectives are correlated which allows for grouping of evaluations. This is called surrogate model assisted opti-
objectives, and in turn, such groups can be aggregated to a mization. One common approach is to optimize on the
single objective. Dimensionality reduction and community surrogate model to predict promising locations for evalu-
detection techniques have been proposed for identifying ation and use these evaluations to further improve the
meaningful aggregation of objective functions. model. In such methods, it is also important to add points
for developing the model in under-explored regions of the
8.2 Preference modeling search space. Some criteria such as expected improvement
take both exploitation and exploration into account. Sec-
The Pareto order is the most applied order in multiobjective ondly, surrogate models can be used in pre-processing in
optimization. However, different ranking schemes and the selection phase of evolutionary algorithms. To save
partial orders have been proposed in the literature for time, less interesting points can be discarded before they
various reasons. Often additional knowledge of user pref- would be evaluated by the costly and precise evaluator.
erences is integrated. For instance, One distinguishes Typically regression methods are used to construct surro-
preference modeling according to at what stage of the gate models; Gaussian processes and neural networks are
optimization the preference information is collected (a standard choices. Surrogate modeling has in the last decade
priori, interactively, and a posteriori). Secondly one can been generalized to multiobjective optimization in various
distinguish the type of information requested from the ways. Some important early work in this field was on
decision maker, for instance, constraints on the trade-offs, surrogate assisted MOEAs (Emmerich et al. 2006) and
relative importance of the objectives, and preferred regions ParEGO algorithm (Knowles 2006). A state of the art
on the Pareto front. Another way to elicit preference review can be found in Allmendinger et al. (2017).
information is by ordinal regression; here the user is asked
for pairwise comparisons of some of the solutions. From 8.4 New bio-inspired paradigms
this data, the weights of utility functions are learned
(Branke et al. 2015). The interested reader is also referred Inspiration by nature has been a creative force for dealing
to interesting work on non-monotonic utility functions, with optimization algorithm design. Apart from biological
using the Choquet integral (Branke et al. 2016). Notably, evolution, many other natural phenomena have been con-
the topic of preference elicitation is one of the main topics sidered. While many of these algorithmic ideas have so far
in Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). In recent remained in a somewhat experimental and immature state,
years collaboration between MCDA and multiobjective some non-evolutionary bio-inspired optimization algo-
optimization (MOO) brought forward many new useful rithms have gained maturation and competitive perfor-
approaches. A recommended reference for MCDA is Bel- mance. Among others, this seems to hold for particle
ton and Stewart (2002). For a comprehensive overview of swarm optimization (Reyes-Sierra and Coello Coello
preference modelling in multiobjective optimization we 2006), ant colony optimization (Barán and Schaerer 2003),
refer to Li et al. (2017) and Hakanen et al. (2016). More- and artificial immune systems Coello Coello and Cortés
over Greco et al. (2016) contains an updated collection of (2005). As with evolutionary algorithms, also these algo-
state of the art surveys on MCDA. A good reference dis- rithms have first been developed for single-objective opti-
cussing the integration of MCDA into MOO is Branke mization, and subsequently, they have been generalized to
et al. (2008). multiobjective optimization. Moreover, there is some
recent research on bio-inspired techniques that are specif-
8.3 Optimization with costly function ically developed for multiobjective optimization. An
evaluations example of such a development is the Predator-Prey Evo-
lutionary Algorithm, where different objectives are repre-
In industrial optimization very often the evaluation of (an) sented by different types of predators to which the prey
objective function(s) is achieved by simulation or experi- (solutions) have to adapt (Laumanns et al. 1998; Grimme
ments. Such evaluations are typically time-consuming and and Schmitt 2006).
expensive. Examples of such costly evaluations occur in In the field of natural computing, it is also investigated
the optimization based on crash tests of automobiles, whether algorithms can serve as models for nature. It is an
chemical experiments, computational fluid dynamics interesting new research direction to view aspects of

123
604 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

Table 1 Table of (evolutionary) multiobjective optimization software

Libraries (evolutionary) multiobjective optimization
Name Scope Prog. Lang. url or ref

Public domain
ecr EA and EMO R Bossek (2017)
JMetal Metatheuristics/EMO Java Barba-González et al. (2017)
Liger MOO/Design Optim. C?? Giagkiozis et al. (2013)
MOEA framework EMO Java moeaframework.org/
Opt4J EMO Java opt4j.sourceforge.net
PISA EMO C?? Bleuler et al. (2003)
PyMOO EMO Python www.openhub.net/p/pymoo
RODEOlib Robust Optimization Matlab sourceforge.net/projects/rodeolib/
Shark Library Machine Learning C# image.diku.dk/shark/
SUMO Bayesian Optimization Matlab sumo.intec.ugent.be/SUMO
TEA classical EA and MOO C?? Emmerich and Hosenberg (2000)
vOptSolver (Linear) MOO Julia voptsolver.github.io/vOptSolver
Commercial software
EASY Design Optimization C?? velos0.ltt.mech.ntua.gr/EASY/
IND-NIMBUS Design Optimization N/A ind-nimbus.it.jyu.fi
ISight Design Optimization N/A www.simuleon.com
MODEfrontier Design Optimization N/A www.esteco.com
Optimus Design Optimization N/A www.noesissolutions.com
WWW-NIMBUS Design Optimization N/A Miettinen and Mäkelä (2000)
Performance assessment
Performance assessment test problems
BBOB/COCO Benchmarking Tool C?? coco.gforge.inria.fr/
WFG Test Suite C?? www.wfg.csse.uwa.edu.au/toolkit/
ZDT/DTLZ Test Suite C?? esa.github.io/pagmo2/
Performance assessment software
Attainment surfaces R/C lopez-ibanez.eu/eaftools
Hypervolume computation C lopez-ibanez.eu/hypervolume
Hypervolume computation Link Collection Various ls11-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/rudolph/hypervolume/start

natural evolution as a multiobjective optimization process, have been developed, and techniques that originated from
and first such models have been explored in Rueffler evolutionary multiobjective optimization have been trans-
(2006) and Sterck et al. (2011). ferred into deterministic methods. A notable example is the
hypervolume indicator gradient ascent method for multi-
8.5 Set-oriented numerical optimization objective optimization (HIGA-MO) (Wang et al. 2017). In
this method a set of say l points is represented as a single
Traditionally, numerical techniques for multiobjective vector of dimension ln, where n is the dimension of the
optimization are single point techniques: They construct a search space. In real-valued decision space the mapping
Pareto front by formulating a series of single-objective HI: Rld ! R from the such population vectors to the
optimization problems (with different weights or con- hypervolume indicator has a well-defined derivative in
straints) or by expanding a Pareto front from a single almost all points. The computation of such derivatives has
solution point by point using continuation. In contrast, set- been described in Emmerich and Deutz (2014). Viewing
oriented numerical multiobjective optimization operates on the vector of partial derivatives as a gradient, conventional
the level of solution sets, the points of which are simulta- gradient methods can be used. It requires, however, some
neously improved, and that converge to a well-distributed specific adaptations in order to construct robust and prac-
set on the Pareto front. Only very recently such methods tically usable methods for local optimization. On convex

123
A tutorial on multiobjective optimization: fundamentals and evolutionary methods 605

problems, fast linear convergence can be achieved. By table of MOO Software, including also some packages
using second-order derivatives in a hypervolume-based that include deterministic solvers.
Newton-Raphson method, even quadratic convergence
Conferences and Journals:
speed has been demonstrated empirically on a set of con-
vex bi-objective problems. The theory of such second- – Conferences:
order methods is subject to ongoing research (Hernández
– Conference on Evolutionary Computation
et al. 2014).
(CEC), annual, published by IEEE
– Evolutionary Multi-criterion Optimization
8.6 Advanced performance assessment
(EMO) biannual conference, proceedings pub-
lished by Springer LNCS
Despite significant progress on the topic of performance
– EVOLVE—a Bridge between Probability, Set
assessment in recent years, there are still many unanswered
Oriented Numerics and Evolutionary Computa-
questions. A bigger field of research is on performance
tion, annual until 2015, published by Springer
assessment of interactive and many objective optimization.
Studies in Computational Intelligence, continued
Moreover, the dependency of performance measures on
as NEO see below
parameters, such as the reference point of the hypervolume
– GECCO with EMO track, annual, published by
indicator requires further investigation. Some promising
ACM
work in that direction was recently provided in Ishibuchi
– Global Optimization Workshop (GO), biannual,
et al. (2017).
published by diverse publishers (as special
issues, and post-proceedings)
– MCDM with EMO track, biannual, published by
9 How to get started? MCDM International Society
– Numerical and Evolutionary Optimiza-
In the following, we list some of the main resources for the
tion(NEO), annual, published by Springer
field of (Evolutionary) Multiobjective Optimization.
Advances in Computational Intelligence
Introductory Books: – and others
– Jürgen Branke, Kalyanmoy Deb, Kaisa Miettinen, – Journals2: COAP, ECJ, EJOR, IEEE TEVC, JOGO,
Roman Slowiński Multiobjective Optimization : MCDA Journal, and other Optimization, and Oper-
Interactive and evolutionary approaches, Springer, ations Research journals.
2008
– Carlos Coello Coello et al. Evolutionary Algorithms Aside from the resources mentioned above, there are many
for Solving Multi-Objective Problems, 2007, research groups and labs which maintain a repository of
Springer software accompanying their published research, e.g., the
– Kalyanmoy Deb Multi-Objective Optimization using MODA group at Leiden University http://moda.liacs.nl and
Evolutionary Algorithms, Wiley, 2001 the research group of Carlos Fonseca at Coimbra Univer-
– Matthias Ehrgott Multicriteria Optimization, sity eden.dei.uc.pt/cmfonsec/software.html.
Springer, 2005
– Joshua Knowles, David Corne, Kalyanmoy Deb
Multiobjective Problem Solving from Nature, 10 Summary and outlook
Springer, 2007
– Kaisa Miettinen Multiobjective Nonlinear Optimiza- In this tutorial, we gave an introduction to the field of
tion, Kluwer, 2012 multiobjective optimization. We covered the topics of
order-theoretical foundations, scalarization approaches,
Websites: and optimality conditions. As solution methods, we dis-
– EMOO Repository by Carlos Coello Coello http:// cussed homotopy and evolutionary methods. In the context
neo.lcc.uma.es/emoo/ of Evolutionary methods, we discussed three state-of-the-
– SIMCO Open Problems http://simco.gforge.inria.fr/ art techniques in detail, namely NSGA-II, SMS-EMOA,
doku.php?id=openproblems; a collection of open and MOEA/D, each representing a key paradigm in evo-
problems and theoretical results on indicator based lutionary multiobjective algorithm design. NSGA-II served
approaches and complexity theory.
There are many implementations of multiobjective 2
a selection of journals in which many articles are published on
optimization algorithms available. Table 1 provides a (Evolutionary) Multiobjective Optimization.

123
606 M. T. M. Emmerich , A. H. Deutz

as a representative of Pareto based approaches, SMS- computational complexity, generalizations, for instance,
EMOA as an example of Indicator-based approaches, and level set approximation, diversity optimization, and set-
MOEA/D as an example of decomposition based approa- oriented optimization, customization and integration into
ches. These algorithms have some advantages and multidisciplinary workflows, and scalability to big data, or
disadvantages: expensive evaluations.
– Pareto-based approaches follow a straightforward Acknowledgements The authors thank the anonymous reviewers very
design principle, that is directly based on Pareto much for their constructive and detailed feedback.
dominance and diversity preservation (using, for
instance, crowding distance). Usually, these algorithms Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creative
require only a few parameters, and larger numbers of commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, dis-
objective functions do not cause problems. However, it tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give
might be difficult to guarantee and measure conver- appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a
gence and achieve a very regular spacing of solutions. link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.
– Indicator-based approaches use an indicator for the
performance of an approximation set to guide the
search. It is possible to assess their convergence References
behavior online, and they hold the promise to be more
amenable to theoretical analysis. However, the com- Allmendinger R, Emmerich M, Hakanen J, Jin Y, Rigoni E (2017)
putation time often increases rapidly with the number Surrogate-assisted multicriteria optimization: complexities,
of dimensions and the distribution of points in the prospective solutions, and business case. J Multi-Criteria Decis
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