Multi-objective optimisation using cellular automata: application to multi-purpose reservoir operation

ABSTRACT In this paper, a weighted cellular automata (CA) is proposed to solve bi-objective reservoir operation optimisation problem considering two objectives of water supply and hydropower production. A mathematically derived updating rule is used contributing to the efficiency of the proposed CA method. The updating rule of the problem is derived by converting the bi-objective problem to a single-objective problem using the well-known weighting method. The proposed method is used to operate the Dez reservoir in Iran over various operation periods of 60, 120, 240 and 480 months to test the performance of the method for operational problems of different scales. Performance of the method is also compared with that of a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGAII) as one of the most popular multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. The results indicate that the proposed method is highly efficient compared to the NSGAII while producing comparable results. This is in line with the early findings of superior efficiency and comparable effectiveness of the CA method with the existing evolutionary algorithms for single objective optimisation problems.