Seat assignment models for classrooms in response to Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Covid-19 has caused significant distress to social life, economy, health system, education, and many more areas all over the world. Measures such as social distance, wearing a mask, and personnel hygiene in public places and institutions are crucial to prevent the spread of the pandemic. A state university in Turkey intends to launch education during the pandemic so try to arrange seat layout for its classes in an optimum way to minimise the risk of the infection for its personnel and students due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, we propose optimisation models as well as graph-based heuristic algorithms to help the university manage this problem. Note that the solution methodologies of this study preserve the recommended social distancing among students and the recommended surface area per student, as ways to mitigate the risk of infection. Computational testing is provided, demonstrating that the optimisation models provide the optimal seat layout in a three-hour time frame for most of the tested class instances, whereas the heuristics generate the optimal seat pattern in less than one-minute time interval for every tested instance.

Keywords:

• Social distancing
• seat assignment problem
• education
• optimisation models
• heuristics

Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Dr. Orhan Uzun, the rector of Bartin University, for his supports and assistance on the study. We also thank Ugur Sahinkaya, the IT staff of Bartin University, for invaluable help with classrooms data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.