Project Title: A Hybrid Meta-heuristic for the Reorganisation of Office Space Allocation
Student: Ngoc Thang Dao
Course: BSc Hons Mathematics and Computer Science
	
Abstract:
The aim of this project is to develop an automating reorganising space 
allocation system in academic institutions. The problem is to distribute 
a set of resources (staff, research students, special function rooms) to 
a number of available rooms in the way that maximises the space utilisation, 
minimises the disturbance cost and satisfies additional constraints as 
much as possible. This is a combinatorial problem, multi-objective, 
high constraints which is needed to be carried out by university 
frequently due to the continuous changes that might be ocurred in the 
working environment. The mathematical model that reflexes the real 
problem is formulated in this project. The literature review on two 
well - known meta - heuristic methods such as Simulated Annealing and 
Tabu Search is also provided. The system is then implemented applying 
a combination of these two methods. The performances of the software 
is tested with real data obtained from three universities in Britain, 
and the results show that the algorithm has the ability of producing 
high quality solutions much faster compared with the time required by 
manual approach. The main distribution of this project is the development 
of a combined algorithm of simulated Annealing and Tabu Search which 
has the convergent to global optima solution characteristic and the 
capability of avoiding cycling and recurrence in the searching process.