Abstract
This paper presents the Variable Landscape Search (VLS), a novel metaheuristic designed for global optimization of complex problems by dynamically altering the objective function landscape. Unlike traditional methods that operate within a static search space, VLS introduces an additional level of flexibility and diversity to the global optimization process. It does this by continuously and iteratively varying the objective function landscape through slight modifications to the problem formulation, the input data, or both. The innovation of the VLS metaheuristic stems from its unique capability to seamlessly fuse dynamic adaptations in problem formulation with modifications in input data. This dual-modality approach enables continuous exploration of interconnected and evolving search spaces, significantly enhancing the potential for discovering optimal solutions in complex, multi-faceted optimization scenarios, thereby making it adaptable across various domains. In this paper, one of the theoretical results is obtained as a generalization of three alternative metaheuristics, which have been reduced to special cases of VLS: Variable Formulation Search (VFS), Formulation Space Search (FSS), and Variable Search Space (VSS). As a practical application, the paper demonstrates the superior efficiency of a recent big data clustering algorithm through its conceptualization using the VLS paradigm.