A test problem generator for non-stationary environments

There has recently been a growing interest in the study of EA performance in changing environments. Studies of EAs in dynamic environments, however, have used only a few limited fitness functions. As has been shown in the study of EAs in static environments, comparative studies of the effectiveness of various EAs in dynamic environments will require more rigorous and standardized test functions. These functions should have a simple representation mechanism, so that a wide range of complexity and sophisticated dynamics can be unambiguously described in an elementary manner. The paper proposes an initial test function generator with these characteristics to facilitate further understanding of the effectiveness of different EA implementations in different types of dynamic environments