ABSTRACT

Metaheuristics may usefully be categorized as either local search metaheuristics (the subject of this chapter) or population based metaheuristics (the subject of the next chapter). In either case metaheuristics are heuristics that may be realized in many different ways as particular heuristics. A goal of this chapter, and the next, is to clarify this statement. That is something easily and best done with specific examples before us. Let us proceed, then, to discuss the first of the four local search metaheuristics that are the main subject of this chapter.