Negotiation Protocols for Distributed Nurse Rostering

One intricate computational problem still researched today is the Nurse Rostering Problem. Most literature presents different solutions to the local problem, but in recent years the concept of problem decomposition was identified as one way to improve performance. The downside of this is that the quality of separate rosters is much lower than that of a central solution, where personnel can be scheduled in other wards. Some recent papers introduce negotiation as a way to handle crucial problems such as personnel shortages. This contribution presents a method to use negotiation in solving these problems, but at the same time improve the overall quality. A framework for such a system is presented and five different negotiation protocols are compared.