Dynamic temporary blood facility location-allocation during and post-disaster periods

The key objective of this study is to develop a tool (hybridization or integration of different techniques) for locating the temporary blood banks during and post-disaster conditions that could serve the hospitals with minimum response time. We have used temporary blood centers, which must be located in such a way that it is able to serve the demand of hospitals in nearby region within a shorter duration. We are locating the temporary blood centres for which we are minimizing the maximum distance with hospitals. We have used Tabu search heuristic method to calculate the optimal number of temporary blood centres considering cost components. In addition, we employ Bayesian belief network to prioritize the factors for locating the temporary blood facilities. Workability of our model and methodology is illustrated using a case study including blood centres and hospitals surrounding Jamshedpur city. Our results shows that at-least 6 temporary blood facilities are required to satisfy the demand of blood during and post-disaster periods in Jamshedpur. The results also show that that past disaster conditions, response time and convenience for access are the most important factors for locating the temporary blood facilities during and post-disaster periods

A hybrid Ant Colony Algorithm for the exam timetabling problem

International audienceDue to increased student numbers and regulation changes educational institutions that allow for greater flexibility, operations researchers and computer scientists have renewed their interest in developing effective methods to resolve the examination timetabling problem. Thus, in the intervening decades, important progress was made in the examination timetabling problem with appearance of adaptation of meta-heuristics. This paper presents a hybridization of the Ant Colony Algorithm and a Complete Local search with Memory heuristic, in order to maximize as much as possible; the free time between consecutive exams for each student, while respecting the conflict constraints, a student cannot sit more than one exam in the same timeslot.Vue l’augmentation du nombre d’étudiants dans les établissements scolaires et universitaires, le nombre d’examens à passer par chaque étudiant et les réformes pédagogiques actuelles, les planifications classiques des cours et des examens ne sont plus suffisantes, ce qui a amené les chercheurs opérationnels et les informaticiens à chercher des nouvelles méthodes pour résoudre le problème d’emploi du temps des examens. Notre travail consiste à planifier les examens de telle sorte à maximiser le temps de séparation entre deux examens consécutifs pour chaque étudiant et ceci en utilisant l’algorithme de colonies de fourmis hybridé avec une technique de recherche locale