Evolutionary computing for the sustainable management of educative institutions

Resumen

Educative institutions consist of systems that can be considered as discrete event systems and show a complex behavior. The management of this kind of institutions may be very demanding, particularly if the planning and scheduling of educative activities are complemented by environmental and financial issues, such as programs of energy consumption efficiency, waste reduction and control, or rationalizing the use of the center resources. In order to cope with some of these issues, it is proposed a methodology that combines mathematical modeling, optimization based on genetic algorithms for searching the best solution in the solution space, and discrete event systems simulation. In order to carry out with all these tasks, a modeling paradigm has been considered to describe the educative institution. The institution is modelled using Petri nets following a top-bottom approach. This process is performed by the development of a low-detailed Petri net model of the global system and, in an additional step, the subsystems can be detailed by expanding their models. The Petri net model will present some parameters, representing the decision variables, which act as freedom degrees of the system and constitute the focus of the management board of the educative center. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.