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Variable Neighborhood Descent

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Handbook of Heuristics

Abstract

Local search heuristic that explores several neighborhood structures in a deterministic way is called variable neighborhood descent (VND). Its success is based on the simple fact that different neighborhood structures do not usually have the same local minimum. Thus, the local optima trap problem may be resolved by deterministic change of neighborhoods. VND may be seen as a local search routine and therefore could be used within other metaheuristics. In this chapter, we discuss typical problems that arise in developing VND heuristic: what neighborhood structures could be used, what would be their order, what rule of their change during the search would be used, etc. Comparative analysis of usual sequential VND variants is performed in solving traveling salesman problem.

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Acknowledgements

The works of Nenad Mladenović and Raca Todosijević are partly supported by the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Kazakhstan (Institute of Information and Computer Technologies), project number 0115PK00546, and also by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia, project number 174010. The works of Abraham Duarte and Jesús Sánchez-Oro are partly supported by the Spanish “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” and by “Comunidad de Madrid” with grants refs. TIN2012-35632-C02 and S2013/ICE-2894, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Móstoles (Madrid), Spain

    Abraham Duarte & Jesús Sánchez-Oro

  2. LAMIH, France and Mathematical Institute, SANU, Université de Valenciennes, Belgrade, Serbia

    Nenad Mladenović

  3. LAMIH, France and Mathematical Institute, SANU, Université de Valenciennes, Belgrade, Serbia

    Raca Todosijević

Authors
  1. Abraham Duarte
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  2. Nenad Mladenović
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  3. Jesús Sánchez-Oro
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  4. Raca Todosijević
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abraham Duarte .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics and Operations, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Rafael Martí

  2. University of Florida Industrial and Systems Engineering, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Pardalos Panos

  3. AT & T Labs Research, Florham Park, New Jersey, USA

    Mauricio G.C. Resende

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Duarte, A., Mladenović, N., Sánchez-Oro, J., Todosijević, R. (2016). Variable Neighborhood Descent. In: Martí, R., Panos, P., Resende, M. (eds) Handbook of Heuristics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07153-4_9-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07153-4_9-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07153-4

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