Applying Genetic Algorithm for Allocating Students to the Dormitory Rooms

At the beginning of each semester, new students apply for dormitory residence and they require that their preferences are being met. The problem of how to match these students together in the available rooms is a complicated one, especially when the number of the students is large and when other factors such as students’ preferences for their roommates and room types are embedded in the model. The objective of this paper is to propose an algorithm which can help allocating students to the rooms so that their preferences become maximized. In literature, it is called the “Stable Marriage Problem”. Based on the characteristics of different approaches to solve the matching problem, genetic algorithm approach (heuristic) was chosen. The steps including generating initial population, mating, mutation, and deletion were tailored for the matching problem and finally the proposed algorithm was implemented using MATLAB syntax.

Keywords:

Genetic Algorithm , Student Allocation , Stable marriage problem , Heuristic Optimization