Having Your Operations Research INFORM Policy

One of my favorite quotes on Operations Research is by INFORMS President-Elect Ed Kaplan of Yale University. It appears in  a paper that he wrote that was published in Omega, "Adventures in Policy Modeling! Operations Research in the Community and Beyond,"and says: Modeling need not be “off the shelf”—rather, modeling with OR techniques should be a celebration of creativity.

His paper is a very provocative and stimulating read  and shuts down naysayers.

The paper also is filled with examples as to how Operations Research has informed policy and associated decision-making. The article is focused on community-based policies.  Examples are drawn from urban applications (Dick Larson's research and practical applications), AIDS modeling and needle exchanges (work done by Kaplan), drug control (Jonathan Caulkins), and even homicides and gun availability (Al Blumstein's many contributions), to start, and, of course, security.  Some great work in this area has been done by, I note, among others, Ed Kaplan, Larry Wein, Sheldon Jacobson, and Laura McLay.

Operations Research has been instrumental in informing policies in other settings, as well, from transportation and logistics to the environment and even medical decision-making, and humanitarian operations.

I work on network systems with many associated applications and it is very gratifying when research that you do also informs policy.

A few years ago, in research conducted with Patrick Qiang, who was my doctoral student at the Isenberg School of Management, and with whom I wrote the Fragile Networks book, we introduced a network performance measure, which  allows for the identification and ranking of nodes and links in various network systems operating under decentralized behavior (think of urban transportation networks, certain supply chains, financial networks, and even the Internet). (Patrick is now a tenured Associate Professor at Penn State Great Valley, as of Fall 2015, so more congrats are in order!)

The results of this research appeared in various journals, including Operations Research ones, and even physics, since we wanted to disseminate the work broadly for maximum impact.  A high level overview of our results with some applications appears in: Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in an Uncertain Age, Anna Nagurney and Qiang Qiang, International Transactions in Operational Research 19: (2012) pp 123-160.

The Nagurney-Qiang performance measure has been used in Indonesia to assess new shipping routes in a study financed in part, by the World Bank.   A nice overview of the approach is in a presentation on Prezi.

Our performance measure has also been used by researchers in Greece, led by Mitsakis and collaborators,  to conduct  network performance and components’ criticality analyses to assess the effects of the immense 2007 fires in Peloponnesus on vehicular traffic and the overall transport network.  See also recent work by some of the same researchers on climate change and our measure. 

In addition, it has been leveraged in an insightful report, "Guidebook for Enhancing Resilience of European Road Transport in Extreme Weather Events."

Schulz used our network performance measure to assess the importance of roadways in a part of Germany.  

It was also applied in Ireland to assess new Dublin metro lines. 

It has been utilized to assess the potential impact of earthquakes on critical infrastructure and is now even being applied outside the policy arena in physiological settings (yes, networks are everywhere and that is one reason why I love them!).

As for my work on paradoxes, including environmental ones, in 2007, one of my papers was featured in the New Zealand parliament; info here. 

Operations Researchers work on tough problems with solutions having broad and fascinating impacts!

Swine Flu, Travel, and Talk at University of California Davis

Today, the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland raised the alert level of the increasing swine flu outbreak one notch to just one level below a pandemic. Tomorrow I was scheduled to fly through Las Vegas to Sacramento, California, where I was to give a talk May 1, 2009 at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis. The announcement for my talk has been posted in this speaker series. I was so looking forward to seeing colleagues there, including Professor Patricia L. Mokhtarian and Professor Yueyue Fan, who invited me to speak. Also, one of our doctoral students at UMass Amherst, Deanna Kennedy, whose family is living in the Davis area was planning on coming to my talk. Professor Mokhtarian and I, along with Professor June Dong, whom I have written about on this blog, had a multi-year National Science Foundation grant on centralized versus decentralized decision-making on complex networks. It was a fantastic project and collaboration, which generated numerous papers as well several books, including the book, "Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age," co-authored with June Dong.

However, I was advised that, given the increasing numbers of swine flu cases in California, New York, with cases identified even in Nevada and now in eastern Massachusetts, not to fly. There have been several cases in the Sacramento area and a school there has been closed. The staff at the Sacramento airport has been disinfecting certain areas twice an hour -- a thought, somehow, that did not give me much reassurance. This state of events came on so suddenly at a time when one would think the usual flu season is over and done with -- but this is not a usual flu and, presently, there is no vaccine for it.

What can one do in such a situation? Tomorrow we will be testing the videoconferencing equipment at the Isenberg School of Management and I will be working with the information technology counterparts at UC Davis to check out what the streaming will look like on their side. The talk is scheduled for Friday, 1:30PM California time, which corresponds to 4:30PM Eastern Standard time.

This will be an interesting/novel experience. I love to interact with an audience and we will have to do the best that we can. Ironically or, propitiously, I will be talking about supply chain vulnerabilities and synergies and will try to also bring the reality of the swine flu crisis into the conversations. Our (Anna Nagurney's and Qiang "Patrick" Qiang's) new book, "Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in a World of Uncertainty," which is being published by Wiley will be out in a few weeks and the topic could not be more timely.

Good News and the Isenberg School of Management

What a day it was! Yesterday, one of my doctoral students, Patrick Qiang, at the Isenberg School of Management (ISOM), successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled, "Network Efficiency/Performance Measurement with Vulnerability and Robustness Analysis with Application to Critical Infrastructure." Patrick gave a terrific one hour presentation on his dissertation and his committee consisted of Professors June Dong, Ana Muriel, and Sanjay Nawalkha. His concentration is in Management Science. It was great to see so many of our doctoral students in the audience supporting him. Patrick is an Associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks as is Professor June Dong. Last night we celebrated with a lovely dinner at La Piazza in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The above speaks to one reason why I love the Isenberg School of Management -- our outstanding students, from the doctoral and Master's students to the undergraduates. Speaking of undergraduates, one of my advisees, who has a double major in operations management and economics stopped by my office the other day to chat. The work ethic exhibited by this student, which is characteristic of many of our students, is amazing. Not only is he a double major, but he also is a Resident Assistant in a dorm, plus he even works at Staples in his "free" time. What touched me most during our conversation was when he talked about his dreams and that he loves the Isenberg School, UMass Amherst, and the town of Amherst so much. I told this wonderful student that many of the faculty stay at the Isenberg School because we also really love what it stands for and the amazing people -- from students to faculty to staff and alumni that make up the school. The Isenberg School has always been willing to take risks and to think "out of the box."

For example, a few years ago, the then Dean, Dr. Tom O'Brien, appointed Sheila Bair as the Dean's Professor of Regulatory Policy and Sheila had an office two doors down from me for about 2 years. As everyone knows now, Sheila Bair is Chair of the FDIC, and has been identified as the second most powerful female in the world, after Angela Merkel. Sheila Bair will be speaking today at the Isenberg School after Professor June Dong gives her presentation. Dr. Dong received her PhD from UMass Amherst in 1994. As you may have heard, Sheila will be one of three recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at ceremonies in Boston in May. Congratulations to the ISOM family!