Nondominated Archiving Multicolony Ant Algorithm in Time–Cost Trade-Off Optimization
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 135, Issue 7
Abstract
Time–cost trade-off analysis is addressed as an important aspect of any construction project planning and control. Nonexistence of a unique solution makes the time–cost trade-off problems very difficult to tackle. As a combinatorial optimization problem one may apply heuristics or mathematical programming techniques to solve time–cost trade-off problems. In this paper, a new multicolony ant algorithm is developed and used to solve the time–cost multiobjective optimization problem. Pareto archiving together with innovative solution exchange strategy are introduced which are highly efficient in developing the Pareto front and set of nondominated solutions in a time–cost optimization problem. An 18-activity time–cost problem is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the well-known weighted method to develop the nondominated solutions in a combinatorial optimization problem. The paper is more relevant to researchers who are interested in developing new quantitative methods and/or algorithms for managing construction projects.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 135 • Issue 7 • July 2009
Pages: 668 - 674
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 9, 2007
Accepted: Feb 13, 2009
Published online: Jun 15, 2009
Published in print: Jul 2009
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