Doing Good with Good OR

The February issue of OR/MS Today contains a number of excellent articles about public sector OR! INFORMS President-elect Cynthia Barnhart put together a “Doing Good with Good O.R.” committee with the “goal of showing how how operations research can (and does) provide important insights that can be used to inform and shape public policy on important societal topics.” The committee promises to have some surprises for us at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in DC. Also read the Q&A with Cynthia Barnhart in the December issue.

Some of the articles include:

• Community-Based Operations Research by Michael P. Johnson and Karen Smilowitz. I wrote about this earlier here and here.
• Analysts Promote Human Rights by Doug Samuelson. This article summarizes a new book called Statistical Methods for Human Rights that includes the role of OR in identifying human rights abuses committed throughout the world.
• Preparing for the Democratic National Convention by Harvey J. Greenberg summarizes the logistics problems of hosting a convention (e.g., how to schedule buses) and to make a “green” convention (e.g., how many bikes to have on hand and where to locate them).
• In Case of Emergency by Eva K. Lee discusses a range of countermeasures for large-scale emergencies such as bioterrorist attacks and pandemics.

There is also an article on humanitarian relief logistics by Ozlem Ergun, Pinar Keskinocak and Julie Swann in the December issue.