Benchmarking curriculum$-$based course timetabling: formulations, data formats, instances, validation, visualization, and results

Alex Bonutti $*$ Fabio De Cesco $-$ Luca Di Gaspero $.$

Andrea Schaerf

Published online: $11$ February $2010$

$($C$)$ Springer Science$+$Business Media, LLC $2010$

Abstract We propose a set of formulations for the Curriculum$-$Based Course Timetabling problem, with the aim of "capturing" many real$-$world formulations, and thus encouraging researchers to "reduce" their specific problems to one of them, gaining the opportunity to compare and assess their results. This work is accompanied by a web application that maintains all the necessary infrastructures for benchmarking: validators, data formats, instances, reference scores, lower bounds, solutions, and visualizers. All instances proposed here are based on real data from various universities and they represent a variety of possible situations.