Minimal Perturbation Problem in Course Timetabling

Many real-life problems are dynamic, with changes in the problem definition occurring after a solution to the initial formulation has been reached. The minimal perturbation problem incorporates these changes, along with the initial solution, as a new problem whose solution must be as close as possible to the solution of an initial problem. A new iterative forward search algorithm is proposed to solve minimal perturbation problems. Significant improvements to the solution quality are achieved by including new conflict-based statistics. The methods proposed were applied to find a new solution to an existing large scale class timetabling problem at Purdue University, incorporating the initial solution and additional input changes.