An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem

This paper describes an agent based simulation model to create solutions for the office space allocation (OSA) problem. OSA is a combinatorial optimization problem concerned with the allocation of available office space to a set of entities such as people. The objective function in the OSA problem i...

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Main Authors: Dediu, Alexandra, Landa-Silva, Dario, Siebers, Peer-Olaf
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2018
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53047/
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author Dediu, Alexandra
Landa-Silva, Dario
Siebers, Peer-Olaf
author_facet Dediu, Alexandra
Landa-Silva, Dario
Siebers, Peer-Olaf
author_sort Dediu, Alexandra
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper describes an agent based simulation model to create solutions for the office space allocation (OSA) problem. OSA is a combinatorial optimization problem concerned with the allocation of available office space to a set of entities such as people. The objective function in the OSA problem involves the minimization of space misuse and the minimization of soft constraints violations. Several exact and heuristic algorithms have been proposed to tackle this problem. This paper proposes a rather different approach by decomposing the problem into smaller goals, which are delegated to individual agents each representing an entity in the problem. Agents have an internal decision making process which guides them throughout their search process for a better allocation (room). That is, agents seek to satisfy their individual requirements in terms of room space and constraints. Computational experiments show that the agent based model exhibits competitive performance in terms of solution quality and diversity when compared to neighborhood search heuristics.
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format Conference or Workshop Item
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T20:26:34Z
publishDate 2018
recordtype eprints
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spelling nottingham-530472020-05-04T19:49:14Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53047/ An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem Dediu, Alexandra Landa-Silva, Dario Siebers, Peer-Olaf This paper describes an agent based simulation model to create solutions for the office space allocation (OSA) problem. OSA is a combinatorial optimization problem concerned with the allocation of available office space to a set of entities such as people. The objective function in the OSA problem involves the minimization of space misuse and the minimization of soft constraints violations. Several exact and heuristic algorithms have been proposed to tackle this problem. This paper proposes a rather different approach by decomposing the problem into smaller goals, which are delegated to individual agents each representing an entity in the problem. Agents have an internal decision making process which guides them throughout their search process for a better allocation (room). That is, agents seek to satisfy their individual requirements in terms of room space and constraints. Computational experiments show that the agent based model exhibits competitive performance in terms of solution quality and diversity when compared to neighborhood search heuristics. 2018-09-17 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Dediu, Alexandra, Landa-Silva, Dario and Siebers, Peer-Olaf (2018) An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem. In: 2018 European Modeling and Simulation Symposium (EMSS 2018), 17-19 September 2018, Budapest, Hungary.
spellingShingle Dediu, Alexandra
Landa-Silva, Dario
Siebers, Peer-Olaf
An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title_full An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title_fullStr An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title_full_unstemmed An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title_short An agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
title_sort agent based modelling approach for the office space allocation problem
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53047/