Analyzing the Landscape of the Indicator-based Subset Selection Problem

The indicator-based subset selection problem (ISSP) involves finding a point subset that minimizes or maximizes a quality indicator. The ISSP is frequently found in evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO). An in-depth understanding of the landscape of the ISSP could be helpful in developing efficient subset selection methods and explaining their performance. However, the landscape of the ISSP is poorly understood. To address this issue, this paper analyzes the landscape of the ISSP by using various traditional landscape analysis measures and exact local optima networks (LONs). This paper mainly investigates how the landscape of the ISSP is influenced by the choice of a quality indicator and the shape of the Pareto front. Our findings provide insightful information about the ISSP. For example, high neutrality and many local optima are observed in the results for ISSP instances with the additive $\epsilon$-indicator.