ABSTRACT

Evolutionary modelling methods have gained broad recognition by many researchers engaged in divergent scientific fields ( Davis, 1 99 1 ; Goldberg, 1 989; Holland, 1 993) . Indeed, several hundreds of applications of evolutionary based techniques bear witness to the cogency of this modelling approach ( Liepins and Hillard, 1 989; Michalewicz, 1 992; Mitchell, 1 996; Nissen, 1 993) .