ABSTRACT

Stochastic local search (SLS) algorithms are among the most successful techniques for solving computationally hard problems from computing science, operations research and various application areas; examples range from propositional satisfiability, routing- and scheduling problems to genome sequence assembly, protein structure prediction and winner determination in combinatorial auctions. Because of their versatility and excellent performance in combination with the fact that efficient implementations can often be achieved relatively easily, SLS methods enjoy an ever-increasing popularity among researchers and practitioners.