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Renewable cooling via absorption chillers being supplied by various green heat technologies such as solar collectors has been widely studied in the literature, but it is still challenging to get positive economic outcomes from such systems due to the large expenses of solar thermal systems. This study offers the use of a new generation of solar collectors, so-called eccentric reflective solar collectors, for driving single-effect absorption chillers and thereby reducing the levelized cost of cooling. This article develops the most optimal design of this system (based on several different scenarios) using multi-objective optimization techniques and employs them for a case study in Brazil to assess its proficiency compared to conventional solar-driven cooling methods. For making the benchmarking analyses fair, the conventional system is also rigorously optimized in terms of design and operation features. The results show that the eccentric solar collector would enhance the cost-effectiveness by 29%. In addition, using optimally sized storage units would be necessary to get acceptable economic performance from the system, no matter which collector type is used. For the case study, at the optimal sizing and operating conditions, the levelized cost of cooling will be 124 USD/MWh and an emission level of 18.97 kgCO2/MWh.

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This study examines the potential for widespread solar photovoltaic panel production in Mexico and emphasizes the country's unique qualities that position it as a strong manufacturing candidate in this field. An advanced model based on artificial neural networks has been developed to predict solar photovoltaic panel plant metrics. This model integrates a state-of-the-art non-linear programming framework using Pyomo as well as an innovative optimization and machine learning toolkit library. This approach creates surrogate models for individual photovoltaic plants including production timelines. While this research, conducted through extensive simulations and meticulous computations, unveiled that Latin America has been significantly underrepresented in the production of silicon, wafers, cells, and modules within the global market; it also demonstrates the substantial potential of scaling up photovoltaic panel production in Mexico, leading to significant economic, social, and environmental benefits. By hyperparameter optimization, an outstanding and competitive artificial neural network model has been developed with a coefficient of determination values above 0.99 for all output variables. It has been found that water and energy consumption during PV panel production is remarkable. However, water consumption (33.16 × 10-4 m3/kWh) and the emissions generated (1.12 × 10-6 TonCO2/kWh) during energy production are significantly lower than those of conventional power plants. Notably, the results highlight a positive economic trend, with module production plants generating the highest profits (35.7%) among all production stages, while polycrystalline silicon production plants yield comparatively lower earnings (13.0%). Furthermore, this study underscores a critical factor in the photovoltaic panel production process which is that cell production plants contribute the most to energy consumption (39.7%) due to their intricate multi-stage processes. The blending of Machine Learning and optimization models heralds a new era in resource allocation for a more sustainable renewable energy sector, offering a brighter, greener future.

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This article proposes a benchmark instance generator for the Hop-Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree problem, the Delay-Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree problem, and their bi-objective variants. The generator is developed in C++ and does not uses external libraries, being understandable, easy-to-read, and easy-to-use. Furthermore, the generator employs five parameters that makes possible to generate personalized benchmark instances for these problems. We also describe 640 benchmark instances that were previously used in computational experiments in the literature. Lastly, we include raw results obtained from computational experiments with the described benchmark instances. We hope that the data introduced in this article can foster the development and the evaluation of new algorithms for solving constrained minimum spanning tree problems.

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To prevent the great dangers caused by emergency situations, providing rapid and high-quality emergency aid highly depends on the location of emergency medical centers. The purpose of this research is to present a multi-objective mathematical programing model based on the minimum P-envy algorithm to locate and construct emergency medical services (EMS). Maximizing the coverage in order to increase the probability of survival of different categories of patients, minimizing the costs of constructing EMS and optimizing the ratio of regions having the right to emergency medical services is one of the fundamental challenges in the health care system of countries. In this paper, a model for maximum utilization of EMS considering budget limitations is presented. In this study, since the problem is NP-Hard, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm were used to solve this problem. The parameters of the metaheuristic algorithms were tuned using the Taguchi method. Several instance problems were solved to compare the performance of 2 algorithms. The results demonstrate that the validity of the proposed model. Also, the mean of the solutions obtained by GA for small, medium, and large-size problems are better than the SA algorithm. Also, the GA algorithm obtained more efficient solutions than the SA algorithm.

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The COVID-19 disease has caused a drastic stoppage in the construction industry as a result of quarantines. For this reason, this study focuses on the workforce scheduling problem when working under COVID labor distancing constraints, and additional costs derived from deviation hours or hiring new employees that managers must assume on a project due to circumstances. A multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model was developed and solved using weighting and epsilon constraint methods to evaluate workforce scheduling and the mentioned COVID costs. The first objective function corresponds to the sum of the total extra hours; the second objective function represents the total non-worked but paid hours. Two sets of experiments are presented, the first based on a design of experiments that seeks to determine the relationship between the proposed objective functions and a methodology to determine the cost of considering COVID constraints. The second set of experiments was applied in a real company, where the situation without COVID vs with COVID, and without allowing extra hours vs with COVID allowing extra hours were compared. Obtained results showed that hiring additional employees to the man-crew leads the company to increase the extra hours cost up to 104.25%, being more convenient to keep a workforce baseline and to pay extra hours costs. Therefore, the mathematical model could represent a potential tool for decision-making in the construction sector, regarding the effects of COVID-19 costs on workforce scheduling construction projects. Consequently, this work contributes to the construction industry by quantifying the impact of COVID-19 constraints and the associated costs, offering a proactive approach to address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic for the construction sector.

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The demand for more sustainable structures has been shown as a growing tendency, and engineers can use optimization techniques to aid in the design and sizing stage, achieving solutions that minimize its cost and environmental and social impacts. In pedestrian bridges, which are subjected to human-induced vibrations, it is also important to ensure the users' comfort, besides the security verifications. In this context, the objective of this paper is to perform a multi-objective optimization of a steel-concrete composite pedestrian bridge, minimizing cost, carbon dioxide emissions, and vertical acceleration caused by human walking. For this, the Multi-Objective Harmony Search (MOHS) was applied to obtain non-dominated solutions and compose a Pareto Front. Two scenarios were considered with different unit emissions obtained from a life cycle assessment in the literature. Results show that by increasing 15% the structure cost, the vertical acceleration is reduced from 2.5 to 1.0 m/s2. For both scenarios, the optimal ratio for the web height and total span (Le) lies between Le/20 and Le/16. The web height, the concrete strength, and the slab thickness were the design variables with more influence on the value of the vertical acceleration. The Pareto-optimal solutions were considerably sensitive to the parameters varied in each scenario, changing concrete consumption and dimensions of the welded steel I-beam, evidencing the importance of carrying out a sensitivity analysis in optimization problems.

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Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is the principal reason for failure in developing drug candidates. It is the most common reason to withdraw from the market after a drug has been approved for clinical use. In this context, data from animal models, liver function tests, and chemical properties could complement each other to understand DILI events better and prevent them. Since the chemical space concept improves decision-making drug design related to the prediction of structure-property relationships, side effects, and polypharmacology drug activity (uniquely mentioning the most recent advances), it is an attractive approach to combining different phenomena influencing DILI events (e.g., individual "chemical spaces") and exploring all events simultaneously in an integrated analysis of the DILI-relevant chemical space. However, currently, no systematic methods allow the fusion of a collection of different chemical spaces to collect different types of data on a unique chemical space representation, namely "consensus chemical space." This study is the first report that implements data fusion to consider different criteria simultaneously to facilitate the analysis of DILI-related events. In particular, the study highlights the importance of analyzing together in vitro and chemical data (e.g., topology, bond order, atom types, presence of rings, ring sizes, and aromaticity of compounds encoded on RDKit fingerprints). These properties could be aimed at improving the understanding of DILI events.

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de novo Drug Design (dnDD) aims to create new molecules that satisfy multiple conflicting objectives. Since several desired properties can be considered in the optimization process, dnDD is naturally categorized as a many-objective optimization problem (ManyOOP), where more than three objectives must be simultaneously optimized. However, a large number of objectives typically pose several challenges that affect the choice and the design of optimization methodologies. Herein, we cover the application of multi- and many-objective optimization methods, particularly those based on Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning techniques, to enlighten their potential application in dnDD. Additionally, we comprehensively analyze how molecular properties used in the optimization process are applied as either objectives or constraints to the problem. Finally, we discuss future research in many-objective optimization for dnDD, highlighting two important possible impacts: i) its integration with the development of multi-target approaches to accelerate the discovery of innovative and more efficacious drug therapies and ii) its role as a catalyst for new developments in more fundamental and general methodological frameworks in the field.

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Supercritical Brayton cycles have been considered as one of the technologies that present high thermal efficiencies in a wide range of energy conversion systems. Also, these systems can even increase their efficiency by incorporating a suitable bottoming cycle. In this article, a combined supercritical Brayton cycle with an Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) was analyzed. The influence of key system parameters such as the Brayton circuit high-pressure (Phigh), the turbine-1 inlet temperature (TIT), the turbine-1 efficiency ( n t ), and the evaporation pressure ( P e v a p ) on the economic indicators such as the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), the Payback Period (PBP), the Specific Investment Cost (SIC), and net work ( W ˙ n e t ) was studied. Besides, the effect of these parameters on the exergo-economic indicator r k and the relative cost difference r k were studied. Finally, a thermo-economic optimization of the proposed configurations was carried out. The study revealed that the turbine-1 inlet temperature (TIT) was the variable with the most significant effect on the economic and energy indicators of the configurations analyzed. The increase in the turbine temperature up to 850 °C caused a rise of 63.8% for both configurations. Also, the results revealed that the Brayton/SORC configuration presented the best economic performance compared to the Brayton/RORC system. The thermo-economic optimization revealed that temperatures above 800 °C and pressures between 25-30 MPa increase system performance. In addition, the Brayton/SORC configuration has a comparative reduced levelized energy costs and low payback periods, which makes it more attractive.

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Studies enabled by metabolic models of different species of microalgae have become significant since they allow us to understand changes in their metabolism and physiological stages. The most used method to study cell metabolism is FBA, which commonly focuses on optimizing a single objective function. However, recent studies have brought attention to the exploration of simultaneous optimization of multiple objectives. Such strategies have found application in optimizing biomass and several other bioproducts of interest; they usually use approaches such as multi-level models or enumerations schemes. This work proposes an alternative in silico multiobjective model based on an evolutionary algorithm that offers a broader approximation of the Pareto frontier, allowing a better angle for decision making in metabolic engineering. The proposed strategy is validated on a reduced metabolic network of the microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii while optimizing for the production of protein, carbohydrates, and CO2 uptake. The results from the conducted experimental design show a favorable difference in the number of solutions achieved compared to a classic tool solving FBA.

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In many countries, there is an energy pricing policy that varies according to the time-of-use. In this context, it is financially advantageous for the industries to plan their production considering this policy. This article introduces a new bi-objective unrelated parallel machine scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times, in which the objectives are to minimize the makespan and the total energy cost. We propose a mixed-integer linear programming formulation based on the weighted sum method to obtain the Pareto front. We also developed an NSGA-II method to address large instances of the problem since the formulation cannot solve it in an acceptable computational time for decision-making. The results showed that the proposed NSGA-II is able to find a good approximation for the Pareto front when compared with the weighted sum method in small instances. Besides, in large instances, NSGA-II outperforms, with 95% confidence level, the MOGA and NSGA-I multi-objective techniques concerning the hypervolume and hierarchical cluster counting metrics. Thus, the proposed algorithm finds non-dominated solutions with good convergence, diversity, uniformity, and amplitude.

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The Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) is a key task in bioinformatics, because it is used in different important biological analysis, such as function and structure prediction of unknown proteins. There are several approaches to perform MSA and the use of metaheuristics stands out because of the search ability of these methods, which generally leads to good results in a reasonable amount of time. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on metaheuristics for MSA, compiling relevant works published between 2014 and 2019. The results of our SLR show the constant interest in this subject, due to the several recent publications that use different metaheuristics to obtain more accurate alignments. Moreover, the final results of our SLR show a multi-objective and hybrid approaches trends, which generally leads these methods to achieve even better results. Thus, we show in this work how the use of metaheuristics to perform MSA still remains an important and promising open research field.

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One billion people worldwide experience intermittent water supply (IWS), in which piped water is delivered for limited durations. Households with IWS must invest in water storage infrastructure and often rely on multiple sources of water; therefore, these household-level purchasing and infrastructure decisions is a critical component of water access. Informed by interviews with IWS households, we use radial basis function networks, a type of artificial neural network, to determine optimal household water management decisions that maximize reliability of water supply while minimizing costs for a representative household in Mexico City that uses municipal piped water, trucked water, and rainwater. We find that securing reliable water supply for IWS households is greatly assisted by installation of household storage tanks of at least 2500 L. In the case of IWS households with limited storage options, the overall cost for water supply is reduced by scheduling water deliveries on nonconsecutive days. Rainwater harvesting systems were shown to be economically viable for households with limited water supply. This study demonstrates the importance of considering the management of multiple sources and household storage infrastructure when evaluating water investments in cities with IWS.

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The centralization-decentralization dichotomy in wastewater treatment management has been a recurrent topic of discussion in the urban context. The escalation of environmental hazards linked to increasing mismanaged wastewater flows in emerging or developing cities has vivified this conundrum. It is argued that there is a wide range of parameters to identify the optimal level of centralization-decentralization that must be implemented. In many cases, this prevents decision-makers from having a clear picture of the most appropriate management choices that must be undertaken. Hence, the main objective of the current discussion consists of an in-depth comparison between centralized wastewater treatment systems and decentralized systems with source separation in urban environments of the Global South. Moreover, a set of actions that should be considered in order to upgrade wastewater treatment systems amidst the existence of numerous economic, social and environmental constraints are analyzed. Considering the constraints of megacentralization as a preferred option, we argue that decision-makers should restrain from entering a centralization-decentralization dichotomy, seeing the process as a gradient between the two concepts. In fact, we advocate combining the benefits of each of the two perspectives to generate an adaptive management, site-specific solution for urban environments. For this, the inclusion of quantitative management tools, such as life-cycle environmental or cost management methodologies, in multi-objective optimization models, constitutes an interesting path forward towards fostering comprehensive policy support.

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The high proportion of CO2/CH4 in low aggregated value natural gas compositions can be used strategically and intelligently to produce more hydrocarbons through oxidative methane coupling (OCM). The main goal of this study was to optimize direct low-value natural gas conversion via CO2-OCM on metal oxide catalysts using robust multi-objective optimization based on an entropic measure to choose the most preferred Pareto optimal point as the problem's final solution. The responses of CH4 conversion, C2 selectivity, and C2 yield are modeled using the response surface methodology. In this methodology, decision variables, e.g., the CO2/CH4 ratio, reactor temperature, wt.% CaO and wt.% MnO in ceria catalyst, are all employed. The Pareto optimal solution was obtained via the following combination of process parameters: CO2/CH4 ratio = 2.50, reactor temperature = 1179.5 K, wt.% CaO in ceria catalyst = 17.2%, wt.% MnO in ceria catalyst = 6.0%. By using the optimal weighting strategy w1 = 0.2602, w2 = 0.3203, w3 = 0.4295, the simultaneous optimal values for the objective functions were: CH4 conversion = 8.806%, C2 selectivity = 51.468%, C2 yield = 3.275%. Finally, an entropic measure used as a decision-making criterion was found to be useful in mapping the regions of minimal variation among the Pareto optimal responses and the results obtained, and this demonstrates that the optimization weights exert influence on the forecast variation of the obtained response.

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Epidemiological time series forecasting plays an important role in health public systems, due to its ability to allow managers to develop strategic planning to avoid possible epidemics. In this paper, a hybrid learning framework is developed to forecast multi-step-ahead (one, two, and three-month-ahead) meningitis cases in four states of Brazil. First, the proposed approach applies an ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to decompose the data into intrinsic mode functions and residual components. Then, each component is used as the input of five different forecasting models, and, from there, forecasted results are obtained. Finally, all combinations of models and components are developed, and for each case, the forecasted results are weighted integrated (WI) to formulate a heterogeneous ensemble forecaster for the monthly meningitis cases. In the final stage, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) using the Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm - version II is employed to find a set of candidates' weights, and then the Technique for Order of Preference by similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is applied to choose the adequate set of weights. Next, the most adequate model is the one with the best generalization capacity out-of-sample in terms of performance criteria including mean absolute error (MAE), relative root mean squared error (RRMSE), and symmetric mean absolute percentage error (sMAPE). By using MOO, the intention is to enhance the performance of the forecasting models by improving simultaneously their accuracy and stability measures. To access the model's performance, comparisons based on metrics are conducted with: (i) EEMD, heterogeneous ensemble integrated by direct strategy, or simple sum; (ii) EEMD, homogeneous ensemble of components WI; (iii) models without signal decomposition. At this stage, MAE, RRMSE, and sMAPE criteria as well as Diebold-Mariano statistical test are adopted. In all twelve scenarios, the proposed framework was able to perform more accurate and stable forecasts, which showed, on 89.17% of the cases, that the errors of the proposed approach are statistically lower than other approaches. These results showed that combining EEMD, heterogeneous ensemble and WI with weights obtained by optimization can develop precise and stable forecasts. The modeling developed in this paper is promising and can be used by managers to support decision making.

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In binary image segmentation, the choice of the order of the operation sequence may yield to suboptimal results. In this work, we propose to tackle the associated optimization problem via multi-objective approach. Given the original image, in combination with a list of morphological, logical and stacking operations, the goal is to obtain the ideal output at the lowest computational cost. We compared the performance of two Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs): the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2). NSGA-II has better results in most cases, but the difference does not reach statistical significance. The results show that the similarity measure and the computational cost are objective functions in conflict, while the number of operations available and type of input images impact on the quality of Pareto set.

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In this Data in Brief, we provide the source code for the equality constrained multi-objective optimization benchmark problems EqDTLZ 1-4 and EqIDTLZ 1-2 proposed in the research article "A Benchmark for Equality Constrained Multi-objective Optimization" [1]. Further, we provide the codes for the multi-objective evolutionary algorithms NSGA-II, NSGA-III, aNSGA-III, GDE3, MOEA/D/D and PPS and their numerical approximations on the above mentioned test functions. All codes are provided in Matlab using the PlatEMO classes version 2.0 in order to test different algorithms.

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The present work describes the influence of the parameters employed in the gas tungsten arc welding process (GTAW) when nickel powder is used as a filler metal in 2304/2507 duplex stainless-steel dissimilar joints. Multi-objective optimization was applied in order to maintain the austenite/ferrite percentage in the welded zone. A microstructural and phase quantification analysis was performed in each sample through optical and scanning electron microscopes. It was found that a nickel powder addition combined with low heat input increased the biphasic ratio across the different zones of the dissimilar welded samples. Although the austenite volume fraction increased in the 2304 heat-affected zone (HAZ) near to 25%, it was not sufficient according to international standards. The obtained results led to the maintenance of the 50/50 phase percentage in the 2507 HAZ welded joint side, as well as to the increment of the austenite percentage in the 2304 HAZ.

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Demand Response (DR) aims to motivate end consumers to change their energy consumption patterns in response to changes in electricity prices or when the reliability of the electrical power system (EPS) is compromised. Most of the proposals found in the literature only aim at reducing the cost for end consumers. However, this article proposes a home energy management system (HEMS) that aims to schedule the use of each home appliance based on the price of electricity in real-time (RTP) and on the consumer satisfaction/comfort level in order to guarantee the stability and the safety of the EPS. Thus, this paper presents a multi-objective DR optimization model which was formulated as a multi-objective nonlinear programming problem subjected to a set of constraints and was solved using the Non-Dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), in order to determine the scheduling of home appliances for the time horizon. The multi-objective DR optimization model not only to minimize the cost of electricity consumption but also to reduce the level of inconvenience for residential consumers. Moreover, a priori, it is expected to obtain a more uniform demand with fewer peaks in the system and, potentially, achieving a more reliable and safer EPS operation. Thus, the energy management controller (EMC) within the HEMS determines an optimized schedule for each home appliance through the multi-objective DR model presented in this article, and ensures a more economic scenario for end consumers. In this paper, a performance evaluation of HEMS in 15 Brazilian families between 1 January and 31 December 2016 is presented with different electric energy consumption patterns in the cities of Belém-PA, Teresina-PI, Cuiabá-MT, Florianópolis-SC and São Paulo-SP, with three families per city, located in the regions north, northeast, central west, south and the southeast of Brazil, respectively. In addition, a total of 425 home appliances were used in the simulations. The results show that the HEMS achieved reductions in the cost of electricity for all the Scenarios used while minimally affecting the satisfaction/comfort of the end consumers as well as taking into account all the restrictions. The largest reduction in the total cost of electricity occurred for the couple without children, resident in the city of Teresina-PI; with a drop from US$ 99.31 to US$ 90.72 totaling 8.65% savings in the electricity bill. Therefore, the results confirm that the proposed HEMS effectively improves the operating efficiency of home appliances and reduces electricity costs for end consumers.