A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems
Harmony search algorithm (HSA) is a relatively new nature-inspired algorithm. It evolves solutions in the problem search space by mimicking the musical improvisation process in seeking agreeable harmony measured by aesthetic standards. The nurse rostering problem (NRP) is a well-known NP-hard schedu...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2013
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28285/ |
| _version_ | 1848793543536017408 |
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| author | Hadwan, Mohammed Ayob, Masri Kendall, Graham Qu, Rong |
| author_facet | Hadwan, Mohammed Ayob, Masri Kendall, Graham Qu, Rong |
| author_sort | Hadwan, Mohammed |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Harmony search algorithm (HSA) is a relatively new nature-inspired algorithm. It evolves solutions in the problem search space by mimicking the musical improvisation process in seeking agreeable harmony measured by aesthetic standards. The nurse rostering problem (NRP) is a well-known NP-hard scheduling problem that aims at allocating the required workload to the available staff nurses at healthcare organizations to meet the operational requirements and a range of preferences. This work investigates research issues of the parameter settings in HSA and application of HSA to effectively solve complex NRPs. Due to the well-known fact that most NRPs algorithms are highly problem (or even instance) dependent, the performance of our proposed HSA is evaluated on two sets of very different nurse rostering problems. The first set represents a real world dataset obtained from a large hospital in Malaysia. Experimental results show that our proposed HSA produces better quality rosters for all considered instances than a genetic algorithm (implemented herein). The second is a set of well-known benchmark NRPs which are widely used by researchers in the literature. The proposed HSA obtains good results (and new lower bound for a few instances) when compared to the current state of the art of meta-heuristic algorithms in recent literature. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:01:58Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-28285 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:01:58Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-282852020-05-04T16:36:37Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28285/ A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems Hadwan, Mohammed Ayob, Masri Kendall, Graham Qu, Rong Harmony search algorithm (HSA) is a relatively new nature-inspired algorithm. It evolves solutions in the problem search space by mimicking the musical improvisation process in seeking agreeable harmony measured by aesthetic standards. The nurse rostering problem (NRP) is a well-known NP-hard scheduling problem that aims at allocating the required workload to the available staff nurses at healthcare organizations to meet the operational requirements and a range of preferences. This work investigates research issues of the parameter settings in HSA and application of HSA to effectively solve complex NRPs. Due to the well-known fact that most NRPs algorithms are highly problem (or even instance) dependent, the performance of our proposed HSA is evaluated on two sets of very different nurse rostering problems. The first set represents a real world dataset obtained from a large hospital in Malaysia. Experimental results show that our proposed HSA produces better quality rosters for all considered instances than a genetic algorithm (implemented herein). The second is a set of well-known benchmark NRPs which are widely used by researchers in the literature. The proposed HSA obtains good results (and new lower bound for a few instances) when compared to the current state of the art of meta-heuristic algorithms in recent literature. Elsevier 2013-06-01 Article PeerReviewed Hadwan, Mohammed, Ayob, Masri, Kendall, Graham and Qu, Rong (2013) A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems. Information Sciences, 233 . pp. 126-140. ISSN 0020-0255 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020025513000170 doi:10.1016/j.ins.2012.12.025 doi:10.1016/j.ins.2012.12.025 |
| spellingShingle | Hadwan, Mohammed Ayob, Masri Kendall, Graham Qu, Rong A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title | A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title_full | A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title_fullStr | A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title_full_unstemmed | A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title_short | A harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| title_sort | harmony search algorithm for nurse rostering problems |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28285/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28285/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/28285/ |