Public sector operations research: the course!

Course introduction

I taught a PhD seminar on public sector operations research this semester. You can read more about the course here. I had students blog in lieu of problem sets and exams They did a terrific job [Find the blog here!]. This post contains summary of what we covered in the course, including the readings and papers presented in class.

Readings

Public Safety Overview

• Green, L.V. and Kolesar, P.J., 2004. Anniversary article: Improving emergency responsiveness with management science. Management Science, 50(8), pp.1001-1014.
• Larson, R.C., 2002. Public sector operations research: A personal journey.Operations Research, 50(1), pp.135-145.
• Rittel, H.W. and Webber, M.M., 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), pp.155-169.
• Johnson, M.P., 2012. Community-Based Operations Research: Introduction, Theory, and Applications. In Community-Based Operations Research (pp. 3-36). Springer New York. (Originally an INFORMS TutORial)
• Goldberg, J.B., 2004. Operations research models for the deployment of emergency services vehicles. EMS Management Journal, 1(1), pp.20-39.
• Swersey, A.J., 1994. The deployment of police, fire, and emergency medical units. Handbooks in operations research and management science, 6, pp.151-200.
• McLay, L.A., 2010. Emergency medical service systems that improve patient survivability. Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science.

Facility location

• Daskin, M.S., 2008. What you should know about location modeling. Naval Research Logistics, 55(4), pp.283-294.
• Brotcorne, L., Laporte, G. and Semet, F., 2003. Ambulance location and relocation models. European journal of operational research, 147(3), pp.451-463.

Probability models for public safety

• Larson, R.C. and Odoni, A.R., 1981. Urban operations research. This was the textbook we used to cover probability models, queueing, priority queueing, and spatial queues (the hypercube model).

Disasters, Homeland Security, and Emergency Management

• Snyder, L.V., Scaparra, M.P., Daskin, M.S., Church, R.L., 2006. Planning for disruptions in supply chain networks, TutORials in Operations Research, 2006 INFORMS Annual Meeting.
• Albert McLay, L., Discrete optimization models for homeland security and disaster management, TutORials in Operations Research, 2015 INFORMS Annual Meeting. See slides on my blog.

Deterministic Network Interdiction

• Smith, J.C., 2010. Basic interdiction models. Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science.
• Morton, D.P., 2011. Stochastic network interdiction. Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science.

Papers presented by students in class

Papers selected for the first set of student presentations (background papers)

• Blumstein, A., 2002. Crime Modeling. Operations Research, 50(1), pp.16-24.
• Kaplan, E.H., 2008. Adventures in policy modeling! Operations research in the community and beyond. Omega, 36(1), pp.1-9.
• Wright, P.D., Liberatore, M.J. and Nydick, R.L., 2006. A survey of operations research models and applications in homeland security. Interfaces, 36(6), pp.514-529.
• Altay, N. and Green, W.G., 2006. OR/MS research in disaster operations management. European journal of operational research, 175(1), pp.475-493.
• Simpson, N.C. and Hancock, P.G., 2009. Fifty years of operational research and emergency response. Journal of the Operational Research Society, pp.S126-S139.
• Larson, R.C., 1987. Social justice and the psychology of queueing. Operations research, 35(6), pp.895-905.

Papers selected for the second set of student presentations (methods)

• Ashlagi, I. and Shi, P., 2014. Improving community cohesion in school choice via correlated-lottery implementation. Operations Research, 62(6), pp.1247-1264.
• Mandell, M.B., 1991. Modelling effectiveness-equity trade-offs in public service delivery systems. Management Science, 37(4), pp.467-482.
• Cormican, K.J., Morton, D.P. and Wood, R.K., 1998. Stochastic network interdiction. Operations Research, 46(2), pp.184-197.
• Brown, G.G., Carlyle, W.M., Harney, R.C., Skroch, E.M. and Wood, R.K., 2009. Interdicting a nuclear-weapons project. Operations Research, 57(4), pp.866-877.
• Lim, C. and Smith, J.C., 2007. Algorithms for discrete and continuous multicommodity flow network interdiction problems. IIE Transactions, 39(1), pp.15-26.
• Rath, S. and Gutjahr, W.J., 2014. A math-heuristic for the warehouse location–routing problem in disaster relief. Computers & Operations Research, 42, pp.25-39.
• Argon, N.T. and Ziya, S., 2009. Priority assignment under imperfect information on customer type identities. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 11(4), pp.674-693.
• Pita, J., Jain, M., Marecki, J., Ordóñez, F., Portway, C., Tambe, M., Western, C., Paruchuri, P. and Kraus, S., 2008, May. Deployed ARMOR protection: the application of a game theoretic model for security at the Los Angeles International Airport. In Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems: industrial track(pp. 125-132). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
• Mills, A.F., Argon, N.T. and Ziya, S., 2013. Resource-based patient prioritization in mass-casualty incidents. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 15(3), pp.361-377.
• Mehrotra, A., Johnson, E.L. and Nemhauser, G.L., 1998. An optimization based heuristic for political districting. Management Science, 44(8), pp.1100-1114.
• Koç, A. and Morton, D.P., 2014. Prioritization via stochastic optimization.Management Science, 61(3), pp.586-603.

I missed a class to attend the INFORMS Analytics meeting. I assigned two videos about public sector OR in lieu of class:

Jon Caulkins’ Omega Rho talk on crime modeling and policy

Eoin O’Malley’s talk about bike sharing and optimization (start at 3:51:53)

Blog posts I used in teaching:

We played Pandemic on the last day of class!

• My reading list for my freshman engineering module on engineering systems, critical infrastructure and logistics
• teaching hack: student moderators for student presentations
• Aviation security: there and back again
• Aviation security: is more really more?
• Floods and management science
• Risk-based flood insurance
• Operations research, disasters, and science communication
• Staying safe from tornadoes
• Forecasting models behind power outages for Hurricane Sandy
• The secretary is a useful model for selling a house
• My bracket tips