Metaheuristics in civil engineering: A review

Real-world engineering problems deal with nonlinear, nonconvex, and discontinuous solution space. Due to the high level of complexity, state-of-art methods are required for handling this sort of NP-hard type problem. One of the most efficient strategies is considering metaheuristic optimization algorithms to facilitate them. Civil engineering problems because of the high level of uncertainties and effective parameters have been the subject of many optimization-based studies. In this paper, the main effort was to provide an overview of different applications of optimization algorithms for civil engineering problems. Moreover, we classified a large number of available studies on the implementation of metaheuristics in various fields of civil engineering classified in this study and highlighted the most important features of them to provide an efficient reference for active researchers in this field.