An hybrid evolutionary algorithm with scout bee global search strategy for Chinese nurse rostering problems

Nurse Rostering Problem (NRP) is one of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems about the distribution of medical resources. In the past, there have been several proposed methods like heuristic algorithms and algorithms based on establishing rigorous mathematical models. Especially, the hybrid algorithm combined integer programming and evolutionary algorithm (IP+EA) have been proved to be effective for NRP. However, these methods are not efficient in dealing with large-scale NPR instances, like Chinese NRP. In order to overcome the premature convergence of IP+EA, we propose a hybrid evolutionary algorithm based on scout bee global search strategy. Inspired by the behavior of scouts in artificial bee colony algorithms, the global search is integrated into EA, which can lead the algorithm to escape from local optima. The experimental results indicate that, our proposed approach is more effective than several existing algorithms to solve the Chinese NRP.