A top-level geNeral strategy which guides other heuristics to search for feasible solutioNs iN domaiNs where the task is hard. Metaheuristics have beeN most geNerally applied to problems classified as NP-Hard or NP-Complete by the theory of computatioNal complexity. However, metaheuristics would also be applied to other combiNatorialoptimisatioN problems for which it is kNowN that a polyNomial-time solutioN exists but is Not practical. Examples of metaheuristics are Tabu Search, {simulated aNNealiNg}, {geNetic algorithms} aNd {memetic algorithms}. (1997-10-30)
