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Solving the Course Timetabling Problem with a Hybrid Heuristic Algorithm

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Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications (AIMSA 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 5253))

Abstract

The problem of curriculum-based course timetabling is studied in this work. In addition to formally defining the problem, we present a hybrid solution algorithm (Adaptive Tabu Search–ATS), which is aimed at minimizing violations of soft constraints. Within ATS, a new neighborhood and a mechanism for dynamically integrating Tabu Search with perturbation (from Iterated Local Search) are proposed to ensure a continuous tradeoff between intensification and diversification. The performance of the proposed hybrid heuristic algorithm is assessed on two sets of 11 public instances from the literature. Computational results show that it significantly improves the previous best known results on two problem formulations.

This algorithm is ranked the second place for the track 3 of the Second International Timetabling Competition (ITC–2007).

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Danail Dochev Marco Pistore Paolo Traverso

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Lü, Z., Hao, JK. (2008). Solving the Course Timetabling Problem with a Hybrid Heuristic Algorithm . In: Dochev, D., Pistore, M., Traverso, P. (eds) Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications. AIMSA 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5253. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85776-1_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85776-1_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85775-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85776-1

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