The Outdoor Action Trip Assignment Problem

Abstract

Every year, Outdoor Action (OA) sends hundreds of Princeton freshmen on small-grouporientation trips to backcountry settings across the Northeast. When assigningfreshmen to these trips, OA must balance student preferences, logistical needs, andthe orientation goals of frosh trip. This paper formulates the OA trip assignmentproblem as a mathematical program, demonstrates that the problem is NP-hard, andimplements a working heuristic solution. The results of this paper can reduce theamount of time and effort required for OA to complete the trip assignment processwhile significantly improving the quality of those assignments.