Efficient iterated local search based metaheuristic approach for solving sports timetabling problems of International Timetabling Competition 2021

Sports timetabling is a complex and challenging problem. The latest open benchmark dataset for the sport timetabling problem is from the International Timetabling Competition (ITC) 2021. Due to its complexity, only a few approaches have successfully generated feasible solutions for the problems in this dataset, as reported in scientific literature. To the best of our knowledge, there is only one study in the literature that has successfully generated feasible solutions for all 45 problems in the dataset. In this paper, we propose our novel efficient algorithm based on the Iterated Local Search algorithm to solve the ITC 2021 benchmark dataset. Unlike prior successful approaches that combined metaheuristics with an exact approach, our proposed approach is solely metaheuristic. Our contribution includes the design of strategies for both perturbation and local search phases, coupled with the integration of shuffling strategies. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm is remarkably successful in generating feasible solutions for all 45 problems present in the ITC 2021 dataset.