A Heuristic Approach for Distributing Pilgrims over Mina Tents

Abstract

t. Every year, more than two million Muslims come to the holy city, Makkah, to perform Hajj (the Islamic pilgrimage). One of Hajj rituals is to spend two to three nights in Mina, one of the holy sites. Distributing Muslim pilgrims in Mina, respecting different kinds of constraints, over limited number of tents is a real-world optimization problem. In this paper, a heuristic based algorithm is proposed, called Mina Tent Distribution Algorithm (MTDA), attempting to better utilize the available capacity of Mina’s area in the best possible way with an efficient use of the available resources. MTDA employs seven functions during the search process to find the best fit accommodation for pilgrims on the available tents of Mina. Experimental results revealed that MTDA achieves better performance compared with eight algorithm schemes in all experimental cases. The best result of MTDA was obtained through allocating 80% of the total number of pilgrims over 76.2% of the total available accommodation space of Mina area.