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A heuristic incremental modeling approach to course timetabling

  • Planning, Constraints, Search and Databases
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Advances in Artificial Intelligence (Canadian AI 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1418))

Abstract

The general timetabling problem is an assignment of activities to fixed time intervals, adhering to a predefined set of resource availabilities. Timetabling problems are difficult to solve and can be extremely time-consuming without some computer assistance. In this paper the application of constraint-based reasoning to timetable generation is examined. Specifically, we consider how a timetabling problem can be represented as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP), and propose an algorithm for its solution which improves upon the basic idea of back tracking. Normally, when a backtracking routine fails to find a solution, there is nothing of value returned to the user; however, our algorithm extends this process by iteratively adding constraints to the CSP representation. A generalized random model of timetabling problems is proposed. This model creates a diverse range of problem instances, which are used to verify our search algorithm and identify the characteristics of difficult timetabling problems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, T6G 2H1, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Don Banks & Peter van Beek

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 84105, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Amnon Meisels

Authors
  1. Don Banks
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  2. Peter van Beek
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  3. Amnon Meisels
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Robert E. Mercer Eric Neufeld

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Banks, D., van Beek, P., Meisels, A. (1998). A heuristic incremental modeling approach to course timetabling. In: Mercer, R.E., Neufeld, E. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. Canadian AI 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1418. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-64575-6_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-64575-6_37

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64575-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69349-9

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