Title
Hybridization of harmony search with hill climbing for highly constrained nurse rostering problem
Abstract
This paper proposes a hybrid harmony search algorithm (HHSA) for solving the highly constrained nurse rostering problem (NRP). The NRP is a combinatorial optimization problem tackled by assigning a set of shifts to a set of nurses; each has specific skills and work contract, to a predefined rostering period according to a set of constraints. The harmony search is a metaheuristic approach, where the metaheuristics are the most successful methods for tackling this problem. In HHSA, the harmony search algorithm is hybridized with the hill climbing optimizer to empower its exploitation capability. Furthermore, the memory consideration operator of the HHSA is modified by replacing the random selection scheme with the global-best concept of particle swarm optimization to accelerate its convergence rate. The standard dataset published in the first international nurse rostering competition 2010 (INRC2010) was utilized to evaluate the proposed HHSA. Several convergence scenarios have been employed to study the effects of the two HHSA modifications. Finally, a comparative evaluation against twelve other methods that worked on the INRC2010 dataset is carried out. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieved five new best results, and 33 best published results out of 69 instances as achieved by other comparative methods.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1007/s00521-015-2076-8
Neural Computing and Applications
Keywords
Field
DocType
Metaheuristic, Harmony search, Nurse rostering, Hill climbing, Particle swarm optimization
Particle swarm optimization,Convergence (routing),Hill climbing,Mathematical optimization,Nursing,Nurse scheduling problem,Operator (computer programming),Artificial intelligence,Rate of convergence,Harmony search,Mathematics,Metaheuristic
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
28
3
1433-3058
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.50
55
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
mohammed a awadallah127322.16
Mohammed Azmi Al-Betar262043.69
Ahamad Tajudin Khader368340.71
Asaju La'aro Bolaji41169.48
mahmud alkoffash5100.50