Framework for negotiation in Distributed Nurse Rostering Problems

This contribution deals with the distributed version of the nurse rostering problem. It is considered in a hospital with many separated wards. The nurse rostering problem within a ward is ‘the local problem’, rosters within a ward are ‘local rosters’. At any time in the process, i.e. at the time of the construction of a roster for a certain time period as well as in the course of this time period when unexpected events cause rescheduling, wards may call in the help of their peers. At this level negotiation will take place. The details of the local rosters do not necessarily enter this negotiation level, and when they do, they may be translated from a local representation to a generally accepted vocabulary. After a motivation for a distributed approach, a general architecture is proposed and a negotiation protocol is described.