User:Ali sadollah/sandbox

In computer science and operations research, water cycle algorithm (WCA) is a nature-inspired algorithm (also known as metaheuristic algorithm, soft computing algorithm or evolutionary algorithm) motivated by nature and observation of water cycle process. Indeed, mostly, WCA is inspired by how rivers and streams flow to sea. WCA has been introduced for continuous optimization problems, however, it shows its superiority for discrete and combinatorial optimization problems.

Proponents claim the following merits:

WCA does not require differential gradients, thus it can consider discontinuous functions as well as continuous functions. WCA can handle discrete variables as well as continuous variables. WCA is free from divergence. WCA may escape local optima.