Multi-objective cultured differential evolution for generating optimal trade-offs in reservoir flood control operation

Reservoir flood control operation (RFCO) is a complex problem because it needs to consider multiple objectives and a large number of constraints. Traditional methods usually convert multiple objectives into a single objective to solve, using weighted methods or constrained methods. In this paper, a new approach named multi-objective cultured differential evolution (MOCDE) is proposed to deal with RFCO. MOCDE takes cultural algorithm as its framework and adopts differential evolution (DE) in its population space. Considering the features of DE and multi-objective optimization, three knowledge structures are defined in belief space to improve the searching efficiency of MOCDE. MOCDE is first tested on several benchmark problems and compared with some well known multi-objective optimization algorithms. On achieving satisfactory performance for test problems, MOCDE is applied to a case study of RFCO. It is found that MOCDE provides decision makers many alternative non-dominated schemes with uniform coverage and convergence to true Pareto optimal solutions in a short time. The results obtained show that MOCDE can be a viable alternative for generating optimal trade-offs in reservoir multi-objective flood control operation.