Two parameter-tuned multi-objective evolutionary-based algorithms for zoning management in marine spatial planning

Strategic spatial planning is becoming more popular around the world as a decision-making way to build a unified vision for directing the medium- to long-term development of land/marine areas. Recently, the study of marine areas in terms of spatial planning such as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) has received much attention. One of the challenging issues in MSP is to make a balance between determining the ideal zone for a new activity while also considering the locations of existing activities. This spatial zoning problem for multi-uses with multiple objectives could be formulated as optimization models. This paper presents and compares the results of two multi-objective evolutionary-based algorithms (MOEAs), Synchronous Hypervolume-based non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (SH-NSGA-II) which is an extension of NSGA-II and a memetic algorithm (MA) in which SH-NSGA-II is enhanced with a local search. These proposed algorithms are used to solve the multi-objective spatial zoning optimization problem, which seeks to maximize the zone interest value assigned to the new activity while simultaneously maximizing its spatial compactness. We introduce several innovations in these proposed algorithms to address the problem constraints and to improve the robustness of the traditional NSGA-II and MA approaches. Unlike traditional ones, a different stop condition, multiple crossover, mutation, and repairing operators, and also a local search operator are developed. A comparative study is presented between the results obtained using both algorithms. To guarantee robust results for both algorithms, their parameters are calibrated and tuned using the Multi-Response Surface Methodology (MRSM) method. The effective and non-effective components, as well as the validity of the regression models, are determined using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Although SH-NSGA-II has revealed a good efficiency, its performance is still improved using a local search scheme within SH-NSGA-II, which is specially tailored to the problem characteristics. The two methods are designed for raster data.