Arthropod vectors transmit organisms that cause many emerging and reemerging diseases, and their control is reliant mainly on the use of chemical insecticides. Only a few classes of insecticides are available for public health use, and the increased spread of insecticide resistance is a major threat to sustainable disease control. The primary strategy for mitigating the detrimental effects of i...

This thesis addresses a class of particularly challenging real world optimisation problems that occur in operational patient management in hospitals. These problems are found in surgery scheduling, as well as in scheduling for various nonsurgical treatment or diagnostic services. As a class, these problems can be identified by the following properties: They concern the scheduling of a (potentia...

Military working dogs are rapidly becoming integral to military operations. While they bring many valuable capabilities to the battlefield, it is important that Special Operations leaders consider canine team capabilities and requirements when planning missions. Careful logistical and operational planning can optimize the health, performance, and readiness of the working dog while protecting th...

Analysis of response and recovery efforts to disasters over the past 2 decades has identified a consistent gap that plagues the nation in regard to persons with access and functional needs. This gap can be highlighted by Hurricane Katrina, where the majority of those killed were a part of the access and functional needs population. After a disaster, many individuals with access and functional n...

TACTICAL MEDICAL LOGISTICS PLANNING TOOL: MODELING OPERATIONAL RISK ASSESSMENT The Tactical Medical Logistics Planning Tool (TML+) is a software program designed for Navy and Marine Corps medical planners as a tool that (1) models the patient flow from the point of injury through more definitive care, and (2) supports operations research and systems analysis studies, operational risk assessment...

We investigate changes in operational performance that result from enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation. A literature-based and theory-driven model was developed to examine the relationship between ERP system implementation status and operational performance. Data were gathered through a field study to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the implem...

This paper presents a framework for modelling military operational plans with Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) and its supporting computer tool, Design/CPN. A mapping relationship between key concepts of an operational plan and CPN constructs is established. Parts of an exercise campaign plan were modelled using the proposed framework, and state space analysis of the model conducted to assess operatio...

This paper proposes the application of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for active/reactive operational planning of power systems. The ACO is a newly developed method belonging to the class of evolutionary computation methods inspired from real ants life. Specifically, ACO algorithm aims to determine the optimal settings of control variables, such as generator outputs, generator voltages, transfor...

We describe the operational planning system POP developed for Danzas Euronet, a merger of Deutsche Post Transport and Danzas NTO. As of November 1997, the system has been daily used for the transport planning of on average 4000 container-orders a day on train and vehicles in Germany. Important features include the involvement of many practical constraints as well as the requirement to balance t...

Luxfer Gas Cylinders, a global manufacturer and distributor, provides an apt illustration of Kaplan and Norton’s six-stage management system (see On Balance story). A 2006 BSC Hall of Fame winner, the U.K.-based company (with operations in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and North America), excels at three stages: planning the strategy, aligning the organization, and planning operations—in par...