As previously mentioned, the topographical map of Rocky Mountain National Park has 128 ¥ 128 elevation points. If x and y are encoded in two genes, each with Ngene = 7 bits, then there are 27 possible values for x and y. These values range from 40°15¢ £ y £ 40°16¢ and 105°37¢30≤ ≥ x ≥ 105°36¢. The binary translations for the limits are shown in Table 2.2. The cost function translates the binary representation into a decimal value that repre- sents the row and column in a matrix containing all the elevation values. As an example, a chromosome may have the following Npop ¥ Nbits binary representation: Variable Binary Decimal Value Latitude 0000000 1 40°15¢ Latitude 1111111 128 40°16¢ Longitude 0000000 1 105°36¢ Longitude 1111111 128 105°37¢30≤ This chromosome translates into matrix coordinates of [99, 25] or longitude, latitude coordinates of [105°36¢50≤, 40°15¢29.7≤]. During the optimization, the actual values of the longitude and latitude do not need to be calculated. Decoding is only necessary to interpret the results at the end.