# Improving ASP-based ORS Schedules through Machine Learning Predictions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16454 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16454/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Tabular Data: Deep Learning is Not All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03253/) (2021)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Tabular Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01889/) (2021)
- [ASP-Core-2 Input Language Format](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04326/) (2019)
- [The ILASP system for Inductive Learning of Answer Set Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00904/) (2020)
- [Neuro-Symbolic Learning of Answer Set Programs from Raw Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12735/) (2022)
- [claspfolio 2: Advances in Algorithm Selection for Answer Set Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.1520/) (2014)
- [A Multi-Engine Approach to Answer Set Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.4925/) (2013)
- [Neuro-Symbolic AI for Compliance Checking of Electrical Control Panels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10113/) (2023)
- [Operating Room (Re)Scheduling with Bed Management via ASP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02283/) (2021)
- [An ASP approach for reasoning on neural networks under a finitely many-valued semantics for weighted conditional knowledge bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01123/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Operating Room Scheduling (ORS) problem deals with the optimization of daily operating room surgery schedules. It is a challenging problem subject to many constraints, like to determine the starting time of different surgeries and allocating the required resources, including the availability of beds in different department units. Recently, solutions to this problem based on Answer Set Programming (ASP) have been delivered. Such solutions are overall satisfying but, when applied to real data, they can currently only verify whether the encoding aligns with the actual data and, at most, suggest alternative schedules that could have been computed. As a consequence, it is not currently possible to generate provisional schedules. Furthermore, the resulting schedules are not always robust. In this paper, we integrate inductive and deductive techniques for solving these issues. We first employ machine learning algorithms to predict the surgery duration, from historical data, to compute provisional schedules. Then, we consider the confidence of such predictions as an additional input to our problem and update the encoding correspondingly in order to compute more robust schedules. Results on historical data from the ASL1 Liguria in Italy confirm the viability of our integration. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).