Visualization and Optimization

This book examines ongoing research and practice in using visualization to represent optimization models, explore optimum solutions, and summarize the results of the optimization effort. As research in optimization develops more powerful algorithms capable of analyzing ever more complicated problems, an increasing number of excellent books have been written to explain how to construct optimization models and how to build algorithms to analyze these models. However, solving problems using optimization techniques involves more than just developing newer, faster algorithms. Building, debugging, validating and understanding models and algorithms requires appropriate representations. This book describes how scientific visualization can enhance the representations needed for optimization. Although books on visualization exist, none of them have specifically addressed how visualization can contribute to optimization practice and research. In this book, relevant techniques of computer graphics, virtual reality, sonification, among others, are examined and specifically targeted to optimization. Moreover, applications of optimization to visualization are also explored.