Optimization problems are of great importance across a broad range of fields. They can be tackled, for example, by approximate algorithms such as metaheuristics. This book is intended both to provide an overview of hybrid metaheuristics to novices of the field, and to provide researchers from the field with a collection of some of the most interesting recent developments. The authors involved in this book are among the top researchers in their domain.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the 13th Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation, WIVACE 2018, held in Parma, Italy, in September 2018. The 12 full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. They cover the following topics: Boolean networks and complex systems; economic, societal and technological applications; chemical, biological and medical applications. The chapter "Unveiling Latent Relations in the Photonics Techno-Economic Complex System" is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the 12th Italian Workshop on Advances in Artificial Life, Evolutionary Computation, WIVACE 2017, held in Venice, Italy, in September 2017.The 23 full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. They cover the following topics: physical-chemical phenomena; biological systems; economy and society; complexity; optimization.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, HM 2013, held in Ischia, Italy, in May 2013. The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The selected papers cover both theoretical and experimental results, including new paradigmatic hybrid solvers and automatic design approaches as well as applications to logistics and public transport.

Optimization problems are of great importance across a broad range of fields. They can be tackled, for example, by approximate algorithms such as metaheuristics. This book is intended both to provide an overview of hybrid metaheuristics to novices of the field, and to provide researchers from the field with a collection of some of the most interesting recent developments. The authors involved in this book are among the top researchers in their domain.

The International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics was established with the aim of providing researchers and scholars with a forum for discussing new ideas and research on metaheuristics and their integration with techniques typical of other ?elds. The papers accepted for the sixth workshop con?rm that such a combination is indeed e?ective and that several research areas can be put together.Slowlybut surely,thisprocesshasbeen promotingproductivedialogue amongresearcherswithdi?erentexpertiseanderodingbarriersbetweenresearch areas. The papers in this volume give a representativesample of current researchin hybrid metaheuristics. It is worth emphasizing that this year, a large number of papers demonstrated how metaheuristics can be integrated with integer linear programmingandotheroperationsresearchtechniques.Constraintprogramming is also featured, which is a notable representative of arti?cial intelligence solving methods. Most of these papers are not only a proof of concept - which can be valuable by itself - but also show that the hybrid techniques presented tackle di?cult and relevant problems. In keeping with the tradition of this workshop, special care was exercised in the review process: out of 22 submissions received, 12 papers were selected on the basis of reviews by the Program Committee members and evaluations by the Program Chairs. Reviews were in great depth: reviewers sought to p- vide authors with constructive suggestions for improvement. Special thanks are extended to the Program Committee members who devoted their time and - fort. Special gratitude is due to Andrea Lodi and Vittorio Maniezzo, who both accepted our invitation to give an overview talk.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, HM 2008, held in Malaga, Spain, in October 2008.

The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers discuss specific aspects of combinations of metaheuristics and other solving techniques for tackling particular relevant constrained optimization problems, such as fiber optic networks, time tabling and freight train scheduling problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, HM 2007, held in Dortmund, Germany, in October 2007.

The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers discuss specific aspects of hybridization of metaheuristics, hybrid metaheuristics design, development and testing. With increasing attention to methodological aspects, from both the empirical and theoretical sides, the papers show a representative sample of research in the field of hybrid metaheuristics. Some papers put special emphasis on the experimental analysis and statistical assessment of results, some are also an example of the integration of metaheuristics with mathematical programming, constraint satisfaction or machine learning techniques.

Combinatorial optimization and in particular the great variety of fascinating problemsthatbelong to thisareahaveattractedmanyresearchersformorethan halfacentury.Duetothepracticalrelevanceofsolvinghardreal-worldproblems, much research e?ort has been devoted to the development of heuristic methods aimed at ?nding good approximate solutions in a reasonable computation time. Some solution paradigms that are not speci?c for one particular problem have been deeply studied in the past, and the term metaheuristic is now common for such optimization heuristics. Several metaheuristics - simulated annealing, - netic and evolutionary algorithms, tabu search, ant colony optimization, scatter search, iterated local search, and greedy randomized adaptive search procedures beingsomeofthem-havefoundtheirownresearchcommunities, andspecialized conferences devoted to such techniques have been organized. Plenty of classical hard problems, such as the quadratic assignment pr- lem, the traveling salesman problem, problems in vehicle routing, scheduling, and timetabling, etc., have been tackled successfully with metaheuristic - proaches. Several thereof are currently considered state-of-the-art methods for solving such problems. However, for many years the main focus of research was on the application of single metaheuristics to given problems. A tendency to compare di?erent metaheuristics against each other could be observed, and sometimes this competition led to thinking in stereotypes in the research communities