Artificial infectious disease optimization: A SEIQR epidemic dynamic model-based function optimization algorithm.

To solve some complicated function optimization problems, an artificial infectious disease optimization algorithm based on the SEIQR epidemic model is constructed, it is called as the SEIQR algorithm, or SEIQRA in short. The algorithm supposes that some human individuals exist in an ecosystem; each individual is characterized by a number of features; an infectious disease (SARS) exists in the ecosystem and spreads among individuals, the disease attacks only a part of features of an individual. Each infected individual may pass through such states as susceptibility (S), exposure (E), infection (I), quarantine (Q) and recovery (R). State S, E, I, Q and R can automatically and dynamically divide all people in the ecosystem into five classes, it provides the diversity for SEIQRA; that people can be attacked by the infectious disease and then transfer it to other people can cause information exchange among people, information exchange can make a person to transit from one state to another; state transitions can be transformed into operators of SEIQRA; the algorithm has 13 legal state transitions, which corresponds to 13 operators; the transmission rules of the infectious disease among people is just the logic to control state transitions of individuals among S, E, I, Q and R, it is just the synergy of SEIQRA, the synergy can be transformed into the logic structure of the algorithm. The 13 operators in the algorithm provide a native opportunity to integrate many operations with different purposes; these operations include average, differential, expansion, chevy, reflection and crossover. The 13 operators are executed equi-probably; a stable heart rhythm of the algorithm is realized. Because the infectious disease can only attack a small part of organs of a person when it spreads among people, the part variables iteration strategy (PVI) can be ingeniously applied, thus enabling the algorithm to possess of high performance of computation, high suitability for solving some kinds of complicated optimization problems, especially high dimensional optimization problems. Results show that SEIQRA has characteristics of strong search capability and global convergence, and has a high convergence speed for some complicated functions optimization problems.