CoSPLib - A Benchmark Library for Conference Scheduling Problems

Kheiri, Ahmed and Pylyavskyy, Yaroslav and Jacko, Peter (2025) CoSPLib - A Benchmark Library for Conference Scheduling Problems. In: GECCO 2025 Companion - Proceedings of the 2025 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion :. Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion . ACM, New York, pp. 131-134. ISBN 9798400714641

Abstract

Conference scheduling problems require the generation of schedules for conferences by considering multiple constraints to offer the best possible experience to participants. Previous studies have been published in the literature, however, the comparison and evaluation of the developed methods is challenging, as these methods have been designed to address rather specific requirements of the conferences being studied per se. In this work, we attempt to bridge this gap by making benchmark data publicly available to researchers. We also present a selection hyper-heuristic algorithm to solve the benchmark instances and provide computational results. We aim to raise awareness of the under-studied conference scheduling problem, and to encourage researchers to contribute to the benchmark dataset with new instances, constraints, and solving methods.