User Report

not more than 200 words) In this report, we describe the result of a literature survey on swarm intelligence, focusing on possible applications for logistics in network-based defense. Some background on swarming and its uses for understanding biological and sociological phenomena is given, and the two major variants of swarming methods for optimization are thoroughly described. One of these, ant colony optimization, is based on the behavior of foraging ants, while the other, particle swarm optimization, mimics the behavior of a crowd wherein each participant is influenced by their neighbors. For both of these methods, we describe the original work presenting them and some interesting applications and refinements. Both methods have been extended significantly by several different authors from their original versions. We also describe previously published ideas on military applications of swarming, and give a brief introduction to some problems related to supply-chain management for the future network-based defense. The main result of this study is the bibliography. Here we collect a large number of papers on applying swarm intelligence, with emphasis on applications relevant for logistics.