Project Title: An Automated Venue Scheduling and Booking System for the University of Nottingham Sports Centre
Student: Daniel Brown
Course: Bsc Hons Software Systems

Abstract:
The project proposes an automated scheduling system for the University of Nottingham sports 
centre. The system allows the sports centre to effectively manage their resources and provides 
benefits to the University's athletic community. A number of predefined club activities are scheduled 
into sports centre timeslots while free timeslots can be booked for private use. 
The project presents a two-stage heuristic to solve an automated timetabling problem. The heuristic 
combines list graph colouring and multiple knapsack problems to model operator constraints and 
maximise operator preferences. The solution provides an example of how interfacing to a 
commercial solver can increase timetable optimisation. The system allows changes to be made to 
knapsack solutions. Such a feature cannot guarantee an optimal schedule hence timetable 
customisation features allow a schedule to be produced the user is happy with. Currently it is 
common for separate scheduling and booking systems to be deployed. The project intends overcome 
the problems associated with deploying separate generic systems by seamlessly integrating the 
two components in an application specific solution.