Chaotic initialized multiple objective differential evolution with adaptive mutation strategy (CA-MODE) for construction project time-cost-quality trade-off

Time, cost and quality are three factors playing an important role in the planning and controlling of construc­tion. Trade-off optimization among them is significant for the improvement of the overall benefits of construction pro­jects. In this paper, a novel optimization model, named as Chaotic Initialized Multiple Objective Differential Evolution with Adaptive Mutation Strategy (CA-MODE), is developed to deal with the time-cost-quality trade-off problems. The proposed algorithm utilizes the advantages of chaos sequences for generating an initial population and an external elitist archive to store non-dominated solutions found during the evolutionary process. In order to maintain the exploration and exploitation capabilities during various phases of optimization process, an adaptive mutation operation is introduced. A numerical case study of highway construction is used to illustrate the application of CA-MODE. It has been shown that non-dominated solutions generated by CA-MODE assist project managers in choosing appropriate plan which is other­wise hard and time-consuming to obtain. The comparisons with non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), multiple objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), multiple objective differential evolution (MODE) and previ­ous results verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. First published online: 24 Aug 201