Flexible Automatic Scheduling For Autonomous Telescopes: The MAJORDOME

We have developped a new method for the scheduling of astronomical automatic telescopes, in the framework of the autonomous TAROT instrument. The MAJORDOME software can handle a variety of observations, constrained, periodic, etc., and produces a timeline for the night, which may be modified at any time to take into account the specific conditions of the night. The MAJORDOME can also handle target of opportunity observations without delay.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Experimental Astronom

Conservation Contracting in Heterogeneous Landscapes: an application to watershed protection with threshold constraints

A key issue in the design of land use policy is how to integrate information about spatially variable biophysical and economic conditions into a cost-effective conservation plan. Using common biophysical scoring methods, in combination with economic data and simple optimization methods, we illustrate how one can identify a set of priority land parcels for conservation investment. We also demonstrate a way in which conservation agencies can incorporate concerns about biophysical thresholds in the identification of their priority land parcels. We apply these methods using Geographic Information System data from a New York conservation easement acquisition initiative for water quality protection. Working Paper # 2002-01

A hybrid scatter search. Electromagnetism meta-heuristic for project scheduling.

In the last few decades, several effective algorithms for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been proposed. However, the challenging nature of this problem, summarised in its strongly NP-hard status, restricts the effectiveness of exact optimisation to relatively small instances. In this paper, we present a new meta-heuristic for this problem, able to provide near-optimal heuristic solutions. The procedure combines elements from scatter search, a generic population-based evolutionary search method, and a recently introduced heuristic method for the optimisation of unconstrained continuous functions based on an analogy with electromagnetism theory, hereafter referred to as the electromagnetism meta-heuristic. We present computational experiments on standard benchmark datasets, compare the results with current state-ofthe-art heuristics, and show that the procedure is capable of producing consistently good results for challenging instances of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. We also demonstrate that the algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art existing heuristics.Algorithms; Effectiveness; Electromagnetism; Functions; Heuristic; Project scheduling; Scatter; Scatter search; Scheduling; Theory;

Project scheduling under uncertainty using fuzzy modelling and solving techniques

In the real world, projects are subject to numerous uncertainties at different levels of planning. Fuzzy project scheduling is one of the approaches that deal with uncertainties in project scheduling problem. In this paper, we provide a new technique that keeps uncertainty at all steps of the modelling and solving procedure by considering a fuzzy modelling of the workload inspired from the fuzzy/possibilistic approach. Based on this modelling, two project scheduling techniques, Resource Constrained Scheduling and Resource Leveling, are considered and generalized to handle fuzzy parameters. We refer to these problems as the Fuzzy Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (FRCPSP) and the Fuzzy Resource Leveling Problem (FRLP). A Greedy Algorithm and a Genetic Algorithm are provided to solve FRCPSP and FRLP respectively, and are applied to civil helicopter maintenance within the framework of a French industrial project called Helimaintenance