Application of artificial bee colony algorithm on surface wave data

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is applied to invert surface wave phase velocities. The ABC algorithm, one of swarm intelligence-based algorithms, is inspired from the particular intelligent foraging behavior of a honeybee swarm in nature. To facilitate convergence to an optimal solution, global exploration and local exploitation processes are carried out simultaneously in a robust ABC search process. Using synthetic and observed Rayleigh wave data, we examined the effectiveness and applicability of the ABC scheme in deducing an S-wave velocity profile for near-surface applications. Furthermore, we compared the performance of ABC to those of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). We demonstrated that the ABC algorithm outperforms the standard binary-coded GA and the basic PSO, and it can be effectively used to interpret surface wave dispersion data with the great advantage of employing fewer control parameters.