KNVB and Notilyze: The FC Data Dribblers Case
The KNVB recently participated in the global SAS Hackathon and HackSprint. Together with Notilyze, the KNVB Data Intelligence team took on the challenge of optimizing league schedules using the SAS Optimization tool. The goal was to reduce travel distances, maintain a fair and exciting competition, and contribute to CO₂ reduction in football.
The team, FC Data Dribblers, spent one month developing a proof of concept to make match schedules smarter and more sustainable. Using SAS Optimization, they tested new approaches to organize competitions more efficiently and environmentally responsibly.
This initiative aligns with ongoing KNVB projects around competition scheduling and mobility and offers fresh insights for a more sustainable sports environment. “Football is the largest sport in the Netherlands. That gives us both the responsibility and the opportunity to stimulate positive change, both on and off the pitch. The initial results show that smart data analysis can directly contribute to making the sports sector more sustainable,” says Tim Hofman, Sustainability Program Manager at the KNVB.
Goal: Reduce CO₂ emissions caused by commutes within Dutch amateur football leagues.
The Challenge
Environmental awareness is a hot topic, and the KNVB wanted to investigate whether carbon emissions from Dutch football could be reduced. By implementing a large neighborhood search heuristic for selected junior leagues, the team achieved a 7% reduction in total carbon emissions.
To showcase these results, they created a dashboard in SAS Visual Analytics, integrated with a chatbot to allow users to ask questions directly to the data.
Problem
Suboptimal team distribution in Dutch amateur football competitions leads to unnecessary CO₂ emissions. Currently, the Netherlands is divided into six districts, and competitions are optimized within each district. The team investigated what would happen if the Netherlands was treated as a single area for optimization.
Constraints considered:
- A team can only be assigned to one competition.
- Two teams from the same club cannot be in the same competition.
- The maximum distance between two teams cannot exceed 50 km, ensuring no team is disproportionately burdened.
The Solution – Optimization
Using data from over 10,000 junior teams, already partitioned into divisions, the team applied SAS PROC OPTMODEL to define and solve the optimization problem. Both black-box solvers and mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approaches were explored.
After experimenting with linear and non-linear formulations, the team ultimately implemented a large neighborhood search heuristic:
- Start with the KNVB’s district-based solution.
- Fix 95% of the teams and optimize the remaining 5% using MILP.
- Repeat this process 500 times.
The Solution – Chatbot
The chatbot allows users to ask questions about the SAS dataset directly within the dashboard.
Results
- 7% CO₂ reduction achieved for selected junior leagues.
- Optimized schedules reduce travel distances while maintaining fairness.
- The SAS Visual Analytics dashboard, with integrated AI chatbot, allows stakeholders to explore results interactively.
What are the next steps?
About Notilyze Cloud
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