How to test the robustness of a genetic algorithm? As we known, the genetic algorithm is a random procedure, and its results are related to the initial random seed. 
From a paper(Lucas. et al., 2015 ), it says "A genetic algorithm can therefore derive a diverse set of Pareto optimal solutions in a single optimization run, which is a great advantage over other methods that require multiple runs to characterize the multiple objective space"      
A similar work I have done is also obtained from a single optimization run. And I want to set an repeated experiment to test the robustness of the GA performance.  
How to measure the robustness of the genetic algorithm. I have set different seeds and done several repeated experiments.
 A: I don't agree with the first sentence. Genetic algorithms are stochastic global methods and if the result changes significantly with different random seeds, it simply means that the algorithm converges to local optima and therefore is not working right. In that case, you'd need to reparametrise the genetic operators and probably also the size of chromosomes and population. GA can be extremely efficient only when the space–time tradeoff is wisely accounted for.
Things you can do in order to evaluate GA performance:


*

*Make sure every time you train the algorithm it converges to the same optimal neighborhood independently of the random seed used.

*Make sure the detected optimal neighborhood is as close as possible to the global optimum.

*Make sure that, no matter what you try, the output of the cost function cannot be significantly improved (e.g. by applying a local method such as stochastic gradient descent or hill climbing on the GA's optimal solution).  

*Make sure you reach the optimal solution without wasting time and space resources.


These are the steps I would suggest, but whether or not you'll see dramatic improvement depends highly on the complexity of your search space and the availability of your resources.
