The Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA), derived from the field of human social evolution, is a component of swarm intelligence theory. It was first introduced in 2007 to deal with continuous optimization problems, but recently has been extensively applied to solve discrete optimization problems. This paper reviews the underlying ideas of how ICA emerged and its application to the engineering disciplines mainly on industrial engineering. The present study is the first ever comprehensive review on ICA, which indicates a statistically significant increase in the amount of published research on this metaheuristic algorithm, especially research addressing discrete optimization problems. Future research directions and trends are also described. 
A survey on the Imperialist Competitive Algorithm metaheuristic: Implementation in engineering domain and directions for future research