STOR-i Masterclass: Professor Laura Albert
This weeks masterclass was given by Professor Laura Albert from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She specialises in public sector operations research and gave us an introduction into some of the work she has done. Public sector operational research looks at how we can use OR to help make better decisions for services such as ambulances, fire services and how to tackle disasters.
On Monday we were given an introduction to the history of OR in the public sector and Laura gave us an insight into some of her own work. This involved learning about how OR was used in cities in America such as US during the 20th century in order to increase their efficiency under limited government funding. There was an interesting balance between the answers that were coming from the models of the time, and what the departments were willing to accept. An example of this was how staffing duties were found to be optimal by putting more staff at busier times, however, unions representing employees were often against this since it would inconvenience their daily schedules. Also since this was a new area there was scepticism as to how beneficial following the answers outputted would actually be, as opposed to experts who had worked in the industry for years.
Tuesday morning we were looking at how we can use integer programming to help us place ambulance stations on a map in order to give the best coverage to an area. This built up nicely on some of the work we had done last term with solving different kinds of optimisation problems. The aim was to try and build robustness into how we choose which station an ambulance is sent from in the case of an emergency. This is a simple problem if we are assuming all ambulances are available, but in reality we may have to send our second or even third choice. A problem particularly in America is working out how to provide acceptable service to rural areas whilst still having sufficient capacity in the city centres.
In the afternoon we took a different topic of how we can use OR to help in disasters like hurricanes or terrorism. In the aftermath it is important to work out how we can give aid as quickly as possible to those affected. Problems can include how we can divert resources when roads are blocked, or how we can rebuild the electricity network in order to reconnect key infrastructure in the optimal order.
In all it was an enjoyable two days and I feel like I learnt a lot about a new area that I had not really considered in the past. If you would like to read more about Laura she has her own blogs punk rock or and badger bracketology