Local Search Heuristics For The Multidimensional Assignment Problem

The Multidimensional Assignment Problem (MAP) (abbreviated s-AP in the case of s dimensions) is an extension of the well-known assignment problem. The most studied case of MAP is 3-AP, though the problems with larger values of s also have a large number of applications. We consider several known neighborhoods, generalize them and propose some new ones. The heuristics are evaluated both theoretically and experimentally and dominating algorithms are selected. We also demonstrate a combination of two neighborhoods may yield a heuristics which is superior to both of its components.Comment: 30 pages. A preliminary version is published in volume 5420 of Lecture Notes Comp. Sci., pages 100-115, 200

Local search heuristics for multi-index assignment problems with decomposable costs.

The multi-index assignment problem (MIAP) with decomposable costs is a natural generalization of the well-known assignment problem. Applications of the MIAP arise for instance in the field of multi-target multi-sensor tracking. We describe an (exponentially sized) neighborhood for a solution of the MIAP with decomposable costs, and show that one can find a best solution in this neighborhood in polynomial time. Based on this neighborhood, we propose a local search algorithm. We empirically test the performance of published constructive heuristics and the local search algorithm on random instances; a straightforward tabu search is also tested. Finally, we compute lower bounds to our problem, which enable us to assess the quality of the solutions found.Assignment; Costs; Heuristics; Problems; Applications; Performance;

Problemas de asignación de recursos humanos a través del problema de asignación multidimensional

149 páginas. Doctorado en Optimización.El problema de asignación de personal aparece en diversas industrias. La asignación eficiente de personal a trabajos, proyectos, herramientas, horarios, entre otros, tiene un impacto directo en términos monetarios para el negocio. El problema de asignación multidimensional (PAM) es la extensión natural del problema de asignación y puede ser utilizado en aplicaciones donde se requiere la asignación de personal. El caso más estudiado de PAM es el problema de asignación en tres dimensiones, sin embargo en años recientes han sido propuestas algunas heurísticas de búsqueda local y algoritmos meméticos para el caso general. En este trabajo de tesis se realiza un estudio profundo de PAM comenzando con un resumen del estado del arte de algoritmos, heurísticas y metaheurísticas para su resolución. Se describen algunos algoritmos y se propone uno nuevo que resuelve instancias de tamaño medio para PAM. Se propone la generalización de las conocidas heurísticas de variación de dimensión como una búsqueda local generalizada que proporciona un nuevo estado del arte de búsquedas locales para PAM. Adicionalmente, se propone un algoritmo memético con una estructura sencilla pero efectiva y que es competitivo con el mejor algoritmo memético conocido para PAM. Finalmente, se presenta un caso particular de problema de asignación de personal: el Problema de Asignación de Horarios (PAH). El PAH considera la asignación de personal a uno, dos o más conjuntos de objetos, por ejemplo puede ser requerida la asignación de profesores a cursos a periodos de tiempo a salones, para determinados grupos de estudiantes. Primero, se presenta el PAH así como una breve descripción de su estado del arte. Luego, se propone una nueva forma de modelar este problema a través de la resolución de PAM y se aplica sobre el PAH en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, unidad Azcapotzalco (UAM-A). Se describen las consideraciones particulares del PAH en la UAM-A y proponemos una nueva solución para éste. Nuestra solución se basa en la resolución de múltiples PA3 a través de los algoritmos y heurísticas propuestos.Personnel assignment problems appear in several industries. The e cient assignment of personnel to jobs, projects, tools, time slots, etcetera, has a direct impact in terms monetary for the business. The Multidimensional Assignment Problem (MAP) is a natural extension of the well-known assignment problem and can be used on applications where the assignment of personnel is required. The most studied case of the MAP is the three dimensional assignment problem, though in recent years some local search heuristics and memetic algorithms have been proposed for the general case. Let X1; : : : ;Xs be a collection of s 3 disjoint sets, consider all combinations that belong to the Cartesian product X = X1 Xs such that each vector x 2 X, where x = (x1; : : : ; xs) with xi 2 Xi 8 1 i s, has associated a weight w(x). A feasible assignment is a collection A = (x1; : : : ; xn) of n vectors if xi k 6= xj k for each i 6= j and 1 k s. The weight of an assignment A is given by w(A) = Pn i=1 w(xi). A MAP in s dimensions is denoted as sAP. The objective of sAP is to nd an assignment of minimal weight. In this thesis we make an in depth study of MAP beginning with the state-ofthe- art algorithms, heuristics, and metaheuristics for solving it. We describe some algorithms and we propose a new one for solving optimally medium size instances of MAP. We propose the generalization of the called dimensionwise variation heuristics for MAP and a new generalized local search heuristic that provides new state-of-theart local searches for MAP. We also propose a new simple memetic algorithm that is competitive against the state-of-the-art memetic algorithm for MAP. In the last part of this thesis, we study a particular case of personnel assignment problem: the School Timetabling Problem (STP). The STP considers the assignment of personnel to other two or more sets, for example the assignment of professors to courses to time slots to rooms can be required. First, we provide a brief description of the state-of-the-art for STP. Then, we introduce a new approach for modeling this problem through the resolution of several MAP and we apply our solution on a real life case of study: STP at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana campus Azcapotzalco (UAM-A). We provide the particular aspects for STP at UAM-A and we provide a new solution for this problem. Our approach is based on solving several 3AP considering the introduced model and our proposed techniques.Consejo Mexiquense de Ciencia y Tecnología (Comecyt).Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (México

Collocation Games and Their Application to Distributed Resource Management

We introduce Collocation Games as the basis of a general framework for modeling, analyzing, and facilitating the interactions between the various stakeholders in distributed systems in general, and in cloud computing environments in particular. Cloud computing enables fixed-capacity (processing, communication, and storage) resources to be offered by infrastructure providers as commodities for sale at a fixed cost in an open marketplace to independent, rational parties (players) interested in setting up their own applications over the Internet. Virtualization technologies enable the partitioning of such fixed-capacity resources so as to allow each player to dynamically acquire appropriate fractions of the resources for unencumbered use. In such a paradigm, the resource management problem reduces to that of partitioning the entire set of applications (players) into subsets, each of which is assigned to fixed-capacity cloud resources. If the infrastructure and the various applications are under a single administrative domain, this partitioning reduces to an optimization problem whose objective is to minimize the overall deployment cost. In a marketplace, in which the infrastructure provider is interested in maximizing its own profit, and in which each player is interested in minimizing its own cost, it should be evident that a global optimization is precisely the wrong framework. Rather, in this paper we use a game-theoretic framework in which the assignment of players to fixed-capacity resources is the outcome of a strategic "Collocation Game". Although we show that determining the existence of an equilibrium for collocation games in general is NP-hard, we present a number of simplified, practically-motivated variants of the collocation game for which we establish convergence to a Nash Equilibrium, and for which we derive convergence and price of anarchy bounds. In addition to these analytical results, we present an experimental evaluation of implementations of some of these variants for cloud infrastructures consisting of a collection of multidimensional resources of homogeneous or heterogeneous capacities. Experimental results using trace-driven simulations and synthetically generated datasets corroborate our analytical results and also illustrate how collocation games offer a feasible distributed resource management alternative for autonomic/self-organizing systems, in which the adoption of a global optimization approach (centralized or distributed) would be neither practical nor justifiable.NSF (CCF-0820138, CSR-0720604, EFRI-0735974, CNS-0524477, CNS-052016, CCR-0635102); Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana; COLCIENCIAS–Instituto Colombiano para el Desarrollo de la Ciencia y la Tecnología "Francisco José de Caldas

Lin-Kernighan Heuristic Adaptations for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem

The Lin-Kernighan heuristic is known to be one of the most successful heuristics for the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). It has also proven its efficiency in application to some other problems. In this paper we discuss possible adaptations of TSP heuristics for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP) and focus on the case of the Lin-Kernighan algorithm. At first, we provide an easy-to-understand description of the original Lin-Kernighan heuristic. Then we propose several adaptations, both trivial and complicated. Finally, we conduct a fair competition between all the variations of the Lin-Kernighan adaptation and some other GTSP heuristics. It appears that our adaptation of the Lin-Kernighan algorithm for the GTSP reproduces the success of the original heuristic. Different variations of our adaptation outperform all other heuristics in a wide range of trade-offs between solution quality and running time, making Lin-Kernighan the state-of-the-art GTSP local search.Comment: 25 page

An Efficient Hybrid Ant Colony System for the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem

The Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP) is an extension of the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), where the node set is partitioned into clusters, and the objective is to find the shortest cycle visiting each cluster exactly once. In this paper, we present a new hybrid Ant Colony System (ACS) algorithm for the symmetric GTSP. The proposed algorithm is a modification of a simple ACS for the TSP improved by an efficient GTSP-specific local search procedure. Our extensive computational experiments show that the use of the local search procedure dramatically improves the performance of the ACS algorithm, making it one of the most successful GTSP metaheuristics to date.Comment: 7 page