Modelling and approximate approaches to organising horse race schedules
Résumé
In this paper, we study a scheduling problem in horse race organisation. Horse races must be planned using a predefined racing calendar over a given time period to maximise the total number of runners, while satisfying hard constraints based on racing codes and soft constraints for the modelling of potential race sequences. We propose a compact 0-1 linear programming formulation, and give a proof of its NP-hardness. Then, two metaheuristics guided by a penalty function and using specialised neighbourhoods are implemented and applied to real instances. The numerical experiments show the effectiveness of the methods compared to a more naïve neighbourhood, a heuristic, and manual planning by human experts.