combinatorial optimisation ()

Areas of Expertise

Projects

EvoNet II

The EvoNet Network of Excellence brings together active European researchers and practitioners in the field of evolutionary computing. Originally set up in 1996 with European Commission funding, the EvoNet network provides coordination, support and a web-based infrastructure for research and...

Vehicle Routing with Agent Technologies

Currently a large number of problem solving techniques for vehicle routing are available. It is not always obvious why some techniques are better suited to some problems. This project seeks to investigate the use of competing and cooperative agents to build solutions to the vehicle routing problem...

Mobile Agents in Ad-hoc routing

Recent advances in technology provided the ground for highly dynamic, mobile, infrastructure-less networks, namely, ad-hoc networks. Despite their enormous benefits, the full potential cannot be reached unless certain issues are resolved.

TATTIES

Tatties is an a system that allows events,for example lectures or tutorials, to be timetabled into timeslots and rooms fully automatically. It uses the new technology of evolutionary algorithms to allow timetables to evolve which not only work, but are "good" from the point of view of all concerned.

Metaheuristics

Metaheuristics are widely used to solve important practical combinatorial optimization problems. But the how and why they work effectively for specific problems and for others not, remains a mystery. The overall goal of the Metaheuristis Network is to explore these mysteries, to structure algorithm...

Members

Andrew Cumming

Senior Lecturer / Principal Consultant

a.cumming@napier.ac.uk

+44 131 455 2753

Professor Ben Paechter

Associate Dean (Research and KT)

b.paechter@napier.ac.uk

+44 131 455 2764

Publications

McCollum, B., Schaerf, A., Paechter, B., McMulan, P., Lewis, R., Parkes, A.J., Gaspero, L., Qu, R., Burke, E. (2010). Setting the Research Agenda in Automated Timetabling: The Second International Timetabling Competition. INFORMS Journal of Computing, 22, (1), 120-130.

Urquhart, N. (2010, January). USING REAL-WORLD GEOSPATIAL DATA WITH EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHMS. Paper presented at Universities' Transport Study Group, Plymouth, UK.

Craenen, B., Paechter, B. (2008). A Conflict Tabu Search Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems. In: Hemert, J., Cotta, C. (Eds.) Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization, LNCS 4972, () ( ed.). (pp. ). : . Springer.

Lopez-Ibanez, M., Tumula, P., Paechter, B. (2008). Ant Colony Optimization for Optimal Control of Pumps in Water Distribution Networks. Journal of Water Resource Planning and Management, 134, (4), 337-346.

Lewis, R., Paechter, B., McCollum, B. (2007). Post Enrolment based Course Timetabling: A Description of the Problem Model used for Track Two of the Second International Timetabling Competition. , (), ..

Urquhart, N. (2007). Carbon Friendly Travel Plan Construction Using an Evolutionary Algorithm. In: Thierens, D., Beyer, H., Bongard, J., Branke, J., Clark, J., Cliff, D., Congdon, C., Deb, K., Doerr, B., Kovacs, T., Kumar, S., Miller, J., Moore, J., Neumann, F., Pelikan, M., P, R. (Eds.) GECCO '07: Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation, , () ( ed.). (pp. 2269--2269). London, UK: . ACM.