Comparison of selected reliability optimization methods in application to the second order design of geodetic network

Abstract Determination of the precision of the designed observations in a geodetic network referred as the Second Order Design is an essential element of the network design process. Although the precision requirements are usually of key importance, ensuring an adequate level of reliability, understood as the possibility of outliers detection can be also vital. The subject of this study is the optimization of the observations’ precision distribution to get the balanced observation reliability indices. The objective of the work is to test usability of two optimization methods based on optimization algorithms, (simulated annealing and Hooke–Jeeves optimization), to solve the mentioned problem. An analytical method proposed by Amiri-Simkooei was applied as a reference. The performance of the above-mentioned methods was tested on two simulated angular-linear networks. Due to acceptable working time and the possibility of defining the boundary conditions on the final solution, the Hooke–Jeeves method appeared to be the most suitable to solve the analysed problem.