Flexible Wolf Pack Algorithm for Dynamic Multidimensional Knapsack Problems

Optimization problems especially in a dynamic environment is a hot research area that has attracted notable attention in the past decades. It is clear from the dynamic optimization literatures that most of the efforts have been devoted to continuous dynamic optimization problems although the majority of the real-life problems are combinatorial. Moreover, many algorithms shown to be successful in stationary combinatorial optimization problems commonly have mediocre performance in a dynamic environment. In this study, based on binary wolf pack algorithm (BWPA), combining with flexible population updating strategy, a flexible binary wolf pack algorithm (FWPA) is proposed. Then, FWPA is used to solve a set of static multidimensional knapsack benchmarks and several dynamic multidimensional knapsack problems, which have numerous practical applications. To the best of our knowledge, this paper constitutes the first study on the performance of WPA on a dynamic combinatorial problem. By comparing two state-of-the-art algorithms with the basic BWPA, the simulation experimental results demonstrate that FWPA can be considered as a feasibility and competitive algorithm for dynamic optimization problems.