Hurricane Harvey, Texas, and All of Us

This has been quite the extraordinary week with the solar eclipse (amazing) on August 21 followed only a few days later by Hurricane Harvey (horrific), which is causing "epic, catastrophic" flooding in Houston, Texas,  the 4th most populated city in the US. 

The path of the hurricane can be viewed here. 

To emphasize the significance of this natural disaster, which has been called a one in a 500 year flood, major news sites such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, have all removed their paywalls, which is also being already referred to as the worst natural disaster to ever hit Texas.

You may ask, why worry about what is happening in Texas? First of all, this natural disaster hits "close to home." As an academic,  I know many faculty at universities in Texas and to see some closing down, making tough decisions as to what to do with students, and when to reopen,  reminds me of Hurricane Sandy back in October 2012 when my daughter was a college freshman and her college (as did many in the affected areas of the Northeast) closed, and she could not even make it back to Amherst because there was no public transportation due to fuel shortages. A niece of mine had just started her freshman year at Tulane University in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck but she had had sufficient warning that she was able to get a flight back to Kansas and that university was closed for an entire semester. And my daughter had spent the summer before her senior year of college as an intern researcher at the marvelous Lunar and Planetary Institute, which is located in Houston. I remember her flying from Sweden where she was visiting me when I had an appointment as a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg and flying then to Houston, which had had some rain, and I was worried at that point about flooding. Now, because of Hurricane Harvey, there are very few passable roads in the surrounding Houston area, flights are halted at both Houston airports (how would crews and workers even make it there?), hospitals are without power and running water, and folks are being told to shelter in place and to bring axes to their attics so that they can break through attics to the rooftops to be rescued. 911 operators are overwhelmed with calls.

There are many questions being raised as, for example, why was Houston not evacuated? 
And the relatively new FEMA Director is saying that recovery from the deadly Harvey disaster "could take years."


The last time I was in Texas was last May, when the NSF-funded Workshop on Disrupting Illicit Supply Networks, took place at the University of Texas Austin. It was a fascinating workshop with a focus on human trafficking with very dedicated researchers and practitioners in attendance. Since Hurricane Harvey struck, I have sent messages to operations research colleagues at Texas A&M University, UTAustin, and Rice University, which is in Houston, and, although I have not heard back (yet) from them, I do hope that they are in a safe place.

If you recall Hurricane Katrina, which was the costliest natural disaster, and occurred in August 2005 (Superstorm Sandy was the second costliest one in the US),  the Annual INFORMS Conference (which is the conference of my major professional society) was supposed to take place that Fall in New Orleans - the conference did take place but was moved to San Francisco that November. This year, our INFORMS Conference is supposed to take place in Houston in October! Time will tell but, in the meantime, we have all those dealing and struggling with Hurricane Harvey in our hearts and prayers.

Houston, not only because of its size is so crucial to the US, but it is also an oil and gas hub. Hence, there could be major economic ramifications, and perhaps even environmental ones due to the destruction by Hurricane Harvey. And, it was the primary residence of the Isenberg family (Gene Isenberg was the former CEO of Nabors Industries) and our School of Management at UMass Amherst bears his name.

I do a lot of work in the disaster research area and also teach a course on humanitarian logistics and in recent papers we have focused on, among other topics, issues of coordination post disasters of relief agencies using game theory. A paper of ours on the topic is: A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Network Model for Post-Disaster Humanitarian Relief, Anna Nagurney, Emilio Alvarez Flores, and Ceren Soylu, Transportation Research E 95: (2016), pp 1-18. For a general audience I wrote an article on the topic for The Conversation: How disaster relief efforts could be improved with game theory. Also recently, we published an article on the importance of communications in emergencies: FirstNet for emergency communications: 6 questions answered. 

And my most recent co-edited book, with Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, which includes very timely papers, even on evacuation networks, is: Dynamics of Disasters; Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights.

Thinking of all those in Texas suffering through this natural disaster and the rains are to continue for several more days!

Even Armadillos were at INFORMS in Texas

To give you a feeling (if you couldn't make it) of the scope of experiences that a conferee at the recent INFORMS Annual Meeting that took place in Austin, Texas may have had, I share with you some sights and sites above both in and outside of the conference center venue.

The photos above include snapshots of the Capitol building, the beautiful views on the River Walk, the fabulous keynote talks by Professors Ed Kaplan of Yale and John Birge of the University of Chicago and, yes, even armadillos, which took part in "races" at one of the evening conference receptions. That photo was provided by Professor Debra J. O'Connor of Holy Cross College (thank you)! I assume that the armadillos did not have to pay registration fees.

Photos of Great Times at INFORMS in Austin

One of the most enjoyable parts of any conference is reconnecting with friends in different locations around the country or the world.

In addition to the talks and events that one attends at any conference, it is important to find some time to chat and relax.

Above are photos taken at the INFORMS Austin, Texas conference of a group of us -- all with affiliations with the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, some as former doctoral students or present students -- some as faculty and some as Associates of the Virtual Center of Supernetworks.

There is nothing like getting together and engaging in face-to-face time between sessions and presentations and having a terrific time with a lot of laughter and great conversations!

Smashing Photos from Social Networking and Work and Life Balance Panels

While at the INFORMS Conference in Austin, Texas, November 7-10, 2010, I wrote blogposts on the social networking panel and the work and life balance panel that I very much enjoyed participating in.

Above I share with you some photos of the panelists as well as some of the audience members.

These panels took place on Sunday, November 7, the first one at 8:00AM and the last one at 4:30PM.

Isenberg Students and Faculty with the Magna Cum Laude Award

Last Tuesday morning the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the magna cum laude award at the INFORMS conference in Austin, Texas.

Joining me at the awards breakfast: Min Yu, a doctoral student at the Isenberg School of Management, who served as last year's chapter president, and two former chapter presidents, Drs. Patrick Qiang and Zugang "Leo" Liu, who are now faculty members at Pennsylvania State University campuses.

The above photos were taken at the awards breakfast on November 9, 2010. We were presented with the award by Dr. Burcu Keskin of the University of Alabama and Dr. John Fowler of Arizona State University.

It was a terrific event.

Photos from the Women in OR/MS Award Lunch in Austin, Texas

Above I share some photos with you taken at the Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (WORMS) Awards Luncheon this past Tuesday at the INFORMS conference in Austin, Texas.

Congratulations to Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM for being awarded the WORMS award for 2010! Dr. Candi Yano of the University of California Berkeley chaired this year's award committee.

For previous winners please see the WORMS website.

This event is always one of my favorite ones at the annual INFORMS conference.

See how many individuals you recognize in the above photos.

A Truly Terrific Tuesday at INFORMS in Austin, Texas

Today has been a truly terrific Tuesday at the INFORMS conference, which is taking place in Austin, Texas.

I have been taking part in this conference since Sunday that has attracted thousands of operations researchers and management scientists to this fascinating city.

Today, my day began with the Fora/Chapters Awards breakfast at which the INFORMS student chapter awards were given as well as the Judith Liebmane award, and the Moving Spirit award. Joining me at the table were Dr. Yupo Chan, Dr. Les Servi, and several past Presidents of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter that I serve as the Faculty Advisor of -- Drs. Patrick Qiang, Zugang "Leo" Liu, and Min Yu.

It was terrific to see so many student officers from chapters throughout the US in attendance as well as their Faculty Advisors plus members of the Subdivisions Council. A great breakfast was had by all with a lot of enthusiasm and cameraderie. Congrats to all the winners!

Then I attended a keynote talk by Professor John Birge of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He spoke on risk management and what went wrong in such disasters as the mortgage crisis, the volcanic eruptions in Iceland, and the BP oil disaster. He emphasized incentives and system and mechanism design and how the former, if constructed properly, may have prevented the ramifications and perhaps the occurrence of such catastrophic events. His talk reminded me that in transportation we already are providing incentives for travelers to change their selfish behavior in the form of tolls that enable the system-optimizing solutions to prevail!

The keynote was followed by a wonderful set of presentations by Dr. Alice Smith and Dr. Candi Yano who spoke in a WORMS (Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences) session. Dr. Smith talked about international collaborations with rich graphics and stories about her personal experiences. Dr. Yano, in turn, had interviewed 6 senior/veteran females in OR/MS to extract their experiences and lessons learned from the trenches. Their talks were fabulous and there was a lot of interesting discussion.

Afterwards, one of my favorite events of an INFORMS conference took place -- the WORMS award luncheon at which Dr. Brenda Dietrich of IBM received the award for 2010. She was also elected an INFORMS Fellow this year. The luncheon of salmon and risotto with vegetables and salad was delicious and was finished off by a multitiered chocolate, mocha torte. Joining me at the table were several former doctoral students of mine from the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst who are now professors and even a former undergrad from UMass Amherst who is now at NSF.

This has been a fabulous conference for seeing so many friends and colleagues.

Tonight is the general reception, which should be another great networking and reconnecting event.

Work and Life Balance Panel at INFORMS in Austin

In my previous post I wrote about the social networking panel that I was on yesterday morning at the INFORMS Conference that is taking place in Austin, Texas and provided some highlights of the discussions that took place. Thanks to Professor Laura McLay for organizing it!

My day "ended" yesterday by being on the Work and Life Balance panel at the conference which was organized by the JFIG and WORMS groups and spearheaded by Professors Sadan Kulturel-Konak and Burcu Keskin.

Joining me on the panel were: Professors Marty Wortman of Texas A&M, Larry Seiford of the University of Michigan, Professor Cindy Barnhart of MIT, and Ariela Sofer of George Mason University.

Some advice offered by the panelists:

Time management is extremely important but different people react differently to deadlines and managing stress so you should know what works best for you.

Throw money at the problem, if you can, from getting household help, to babysitters, etc.

Advocate at your university/college if it does not have proactive policies to support having children, etc. Work with the administration, other groups, and a faculty union, if relevant.

Rather than work and life "balance" it is more about "integration." One should have one's priorities, make lists, if that helps, and spend time on what matters to you. You should think of not only how to best allocate your scarce resources of time but also how to minimize regret. Spending time with your family is very important.

In terms of additional professional advice to junior faculty, do concentrate on research and prepare your teaching ahead of time. You can't afford to have a few years pass by without any research output and publications.

Make sure that you have single=authored papers before you are up for promotion and tenure.

Do enjoy the process -- our lives as academics are very full and take advantage of support networks!

Plus, go to conferences -- exchange ideas and meet new colleagues and make new friends!

Professor McLay who was in the audience for this panel was pleased that there were quite a few males attending this panel session. In contrast, and as we had noticed at our morning panel, there were only males in our social networking panel in the audience. Time for more females in technical areas to be blogging!

On Social Networking Panel at INFORMS in Austin, Texas

This morning the Social Networking and Operations Research panel took place at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

The panel was organized by Professor Laura McLay of Virginia Commonwealth University and joining me on the panel were: Professors Wayne Winston of Indiana University, Mike Trick of Carnegie Mellon University, and Auriele Thiele of Lehigh University.

The panelists first introduced themselves and discussed briefly their blogs and social networking experiences. Then McLay led the Q&A with the panelists with further give and take with the audience. The audience was terrific and very international -- thanks for showing up to this 8AM session!

Some of the questions that were discussed (and would merit further give and take):

Which have been your most successful/popular posts and what do you attribute their popularity to?

How do you handle rude/inappropriate/negative comments?

How do you manage the time involved in preparing your blogposts?

How have your experiences with social networking tools evolved over the years? What do you see happening with social networking over the next couple of years? Are there new business models and innovations that you can foresee that may be successful? How can operations research help with new business models in this area?

How does one establish credibility on the blogosphere?

The session was recorded and if it gets posted, I will let you know.

In the meantime, some of the highlights and insights:

1. Blogging is an enjoyable activity if you like to write and comment (it need not take much time but it takes a while to draw an audience and you need to do it regularly, just like exercise, I might add).

2. It is a terrific way in which to get news out and to get discussions going in our discipline.

3. There is room for longer posts (and links to essays and white papers) and at the other extreme Twitter with the latter a good way in which to get timely news and info out quickly.

4. Writing about people, issues, and activities (including sports and related figures and events) seems to increase the audience for your writings.

5. Providing careful analysis in your posts can increase one's credibility.

6. Social networking tools are a great way in which to draw students into operations research and the management sciences.

7. We are not journalists but journalists do draw information from blogs.

8. Increasingly, administrators and public relations and communications officers of colleges and universities are looking favorably on bloggers at their institutions.

This was a very enjoyable panel and a great way in which to begin the INFORMS conference.

The weather here in Austin, Texas is sunny and gloriously mild!

Supernetwork Center Associates at INFORMS in Austin, Texas

Nine of the Supernetwork Center Associates will be presenting papers at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, November 7-10, 2010 so we will be having a very special reunion.

Dr. Tina Wakolbinger of the University of Memphis will be chairing the session: Decision-Making in Nonprofit Organizations in which she will present a co-authored paper, "Collaborative Information Sharing in Humanitarian Supply Chains." In that session, my doctoral student, Min Yu, will present a paper co-authored with Dr. Patrick Qiang of Pennsylvania State University Malvern and me entitled, " Supply Chain Network Design for Critical Needs with Outsourcing." This paper is now in press in Papers in Regional Science.

Dr. Jose Cruz of the University of Connecticut will be chairing the session: Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chain Management in which he will deliver the paper, "Mitigating Global Supply Chain Risks through Corporate Social Responsibility." In the same session, Dr. Zugang Liu of Pennsylvania State University at Hazleton will speak on, "Consumer Environmental Awareness and Competition in Two-Stage Supply Chains," co-authored with Dr. Cruz and Dr. Trisha Woolley (now Anderson).

Dr. Woolley Anderson will present the paper, co-authored with me, "Environmental and Cost Synergy in Supply Chain Network Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions." This paper was published in Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, M. Ehrgott, B. Naujoks, T. Stewart, and J. Wallenius, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2010) pp 51-78.

I will be presenting, "Supply Chain Network Design under Profit Maximization and Oligopolistic Competition," in a session on Risk Management organized by Dr. Jussi Keppo and Dr. Jie Ning of the University of Michigan. This paper was published recently in the journal Transportation Research E.

Dr. Patrick Qiang will present our joint paper, "A Bi-criteria Measure to Assess Supply Chain Network Performance for Critical Needs," in the session on Disruptive Event Management.

And Dr. Dmytro Matsypura will be traveling all the way from Sydney, Australia, where he holds the position of tenured lecturer at the University of Sydney to present the co-authored paper, "Margining Option Portfolios by Offsets with Two, Three, and Four Legs" in a Financial Engineering session.

In addition, Center Associate Dr. Padma Ramanujam of SAS Inc. will also be joining us at INFORMS in Austin, Texas.

I will be posting our presentations, as they become available, on the Visuals Page of the Supernetworks Center website.

Social Networking through Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Beyond

The INFORMS Annual Meeting begins soon in Austin, Texas and I am so looking forward to reconnecting with former students and seeing colleagues from around the globe! I am also very much looking forward to giving presentations, listening to the latest research, taking part in several business meetings and award ceremonies, and to simply enjoying the various social and special professional events.

The conference will begin, for me, next Sunday morning when I take part in a panel on Social Networking and Operations Research that was organized by my fellow blogger and very dynamic colleague, Professor Laura McLay of the Virginia Commonwealth University, as part of a cluster of panels organized by the super-blogger and promoter of Operations Research, Professor Mike Trick of Carnegie Mellon University! Joining me on the panel will be Professor Wayne Winston of Indiana University and Professor Aurelie Thiele of Lehigh University.

We will share our experiences with social networking tools from blogs to Facebook and Twitter with Q&A from the audience, led by Professor McLay. I am certain that the discussions will be very interesting and illuminating, so join us, if you can!

Professor Trick has promised to cover the panel discussions on his blog and to tweet about them as well

Hope to see many of you at INFORMS in Texas next week where the weather is much milder than in Amherst, Massachusetts!