A novel nurse rostering model is developed to represent real world problem instances more accurately. The proposed model is generic in a way that different problem instances can be successfully represented. Novel local search neighbourhoods are developed to take advantage of the problem properties represented by the model. These neighbourhoods are utilised within a variable neighbourhood search...

The Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) metaheuristic is based on systematic changes in the neighborhood structure within a search. It has been succesfully applied for solving various combinatorial and global optimization problems, and related tasks. The aim of this special cluster of papers in this issue of International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) is to gather not only recent a...

the main objective was to find association between basal cortisol and neighborhood-level stress. systematic searches, including electronic and hand searches, were conducted. the most recent date of the search was july 26, 2013. primary observational studies included if they considered stress related outcomes in the neighborhood context. using the endnote x7 advanced search option; the authors e...

Local search algorithms operate by making small changes to candidate solutions with the aim of reaching new and improved solutions. The problem is that often the search will become trapped at sub optimal states from where there are no improving neighbours. Much research has gone into creating schemes to avoid these local optima and various strategies exist mainly based around altering the accep...

The purpose of this paper is to improve the simulated annealing method with a variable neighborhood search to solve the resource-constrained scheduling problem. We also compare numerically this method with other neighborhood search (local search) techniques: threshold accepting methods and tabu search. Furthermore, we combine these techniques with multistart diversification strategies and with ...

proposing a robust designed facility location is one of the most effective ways to hedge against unexpected disruptions and failures in a transportation network system. this paper considers the combined facility location/network design problem with regard to transportation link disruptions and develops a mixed integer linear programming formulation to model it. with respect to the probability o...

Local search techniques are increasingly often used in multiobjective combinatorial optimization due to their ability to improve the performance of metaheuristics. The efficiency of multi-objective local search techniques heavily depends on factors such as (i) neighborhood operators, (ii) pivoting rules and (iii) bias towards good regions of the objective space. In this work, we conduct an exte...

A hybrid Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm is used to tackle the uncapacitated exam proximity problem. In this hybridization, local search operators are used instead of the traditional genetic recombination operators. One of the search operators is designed to repair unfeasible timetables produced by the initialization procedure and the mutation operator. The other search operator implemen...

In this paper, we propose an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem (2E-VRP) and the Location Routing Problem (LRP). The 2E-VRP arises in two-level transportation systems such as those encountered in the context of city logistics. In such systems, freight arrives at a major terminal and is shipped through intermediate satellite facilities to the...