A Visualization Technique for Accessing Solution Pool in Interactive Methods of Multiobjective Optimization

Interactive methods of multiobjective optimization repetitively derive Pareto optimal solutions based on decision maker's preference information and present the obtained solutions for his/her consideration. Some interactive methods save the obtained solutions into a solution pool and, at each iteration, allow the decision maker considering any of solutions obtained earlier. This feature contributes to the flexibility of exploring the Pareto optimal set and learning about the optimization problem. However, in the case of many objective functions, the accumulation of derived solutions makes accessing the solution pool cognitively difficult for the decision maker. We propose to enhance interactive methods with visualization of the set of solution outcomes using dimensionality reduction and interactive mechanisms for exploration of the solution pool. We describe a proposed visualization technique and demonstrate its usage with an example problem solved using the interactive method NIMBUS.