Nature-Inspired Chemical Reaction Optimisation Algorithm for Handling Nurse Rostering Problem

Abstract

The optimisation of the nurse rostering problem is chosen in this work seeking to improve the organization of hospital duties and to elevate health care by enhancing the quality of the decision-making process. Nurse rostering is a difficult and complex problem with a large number of demands and requirements that conflict with hospital workload constraints in terms of employee work regulations and personal preferences. We propose a variable population-based metaheuristic algorithm, the chemical reaction optimisation (CRO), to solve the NRP at the First International Nurse Rostering Competition (2010). The CRO algorithm features an adaptive search procedure that systematically controls the selection between an intensive search strategy and diversification search based on specific criteria to reach the best solution. Computational results were measured with three complexity levels as a total of 30 variant instances based on real-world constraints.