Society and civilization: an optimization algorithm based on the simulation of social behavior

The ability to mutually interact is a fundamental social behavior in all human and insect societies. Social interactions enable individuals to adapt and improve faster than biological evolution based on genetic inheritance alone. This is the driving concept behind the optimization algorithm introduced in this paper that makes use of the intra and intersociety interactions within a formal society and the civilization model to solve single objective constrained optimization problems. A society corresponds to a cluster of points in the parametric space while a civilization is a set of all such societies. Every society has its set of better performing individuals (leaders) that help others to improve through information exchange. This results in the migration of a point toward a better performing point, analogous to an intensified local search. Leaders improve only through an intersociety information exchange that results in the migration of a leader from a society to another. This helps the better performing societies to expand and flourish.