Heuristic and genetic algorithm approaches to the real-world university examination timetabling problem

University Examination Timetabling using Genetic Algorithm

The scheduling of examinations in universities or institutions is known to be a highly constrained combinatorial optimization problem. Generally it is done manually or with the limited help of a simple administration system and it usually involves, taking the previous year's timetable and modifying that so it will work for the next year. But now a days most of good universities provide much gre...

An informed genetic algorithm for the examination timetabling problem

This paper presents the results of a study conducted to investigate the use of genetic algorithms (GAs) as a means of inducing solutions to the examination timetabling problem (ETP). This study differs from previous efforts applying genetic algorithms to this domain in that firstly it takes a two-phased approach to the problem which focuses on producing timetables that meet the hard constraints...

Novel Knowledge Based and Heuristic Approaches to University Timetabling

The research presented in this PhD thesis contributes to a larger project to develop a case-based reasoning (CBR) meta-heuristic selector for examination timetabling problems. Chapter 2 gives a detailed survey of techniques in the literature applied to examination timetabling. The work in this thesis aims to provide a significant contribution to the examination timetabling domain in its own rig...

Tabu Search Based Hyper-heuristic Approaches to Examination Timetabling

A Lagrangian heuristic algorithm for a real-world train timetabling problem

The train timetabling problem (TTP) aims at determining an optimal timetable for a set of trains which does not violate track capacities and satisfies some operational constraints. In this paper, we describe the design of a train timetabling system that takes into account several additional constraints that arise in real-world applications. In particular, we address the following issues: • Manu...