Evaluating train protection systems

This paper arose from the work carried out for the Cullen/Uff Joint Inquiry into Train Protection Systems. It is concerned with the problem of evaluating the benefits of safety enhancements in order to avoid rare, but catastrophic accidents, and the role of Operations Research in the process. The problems include both input values and representation of outcomes. A key input is the value of life. This paper briefly discusses why the value of life might vary from incident to incident and reviews alternative estimates before producing a 'best estimate' for rail. When the occurrence of an event is uncertain, the normal method is to apply a single 'expected' value. This paper argues that a more effective method of representing such situations is through Monte-Carlo simulation and demonstrates the use of the methodology on a case study of the decision as to whether or not advanced train protection (ATP) should have been installed on a route to the west of London. This paper suggests that the output is more informative than traditional cost-benefit appraisals or engineering event tree approaches. It also shows that, unlike the results from utilizing the traditional approach, the value of ATP on this route would be positive over 50% of the time

Employee responsibility and virtuality during crisis decision-making

The purpose of the qualitative case study was to (a) explore crisis decision-making that occurs in a virtual environment such as the Ocean Ranger offshore oil rig by (a) assessing the official report of the incident, (b) conducting interviews with oil and gas industry workers, and based upon results, (c) developing a model for crisis decision-making in a distributed organization. The model includes a breakdown of sensemaking during a crisis, organizational structure, communication and collaboration, both virtual and face-to-face, during a crisis, as well as normalization. The model also includes definitions of responsibility and variables that can assist in determining whether or not a situation is a crisis, and the impact of this determination on the decision-making apparatus. The collection of data was implemented with interviews of 37 oil rig workers and examination of the official report of the Royal Commission for the Ocean Ranger Disaster. Interviewees ranged from oil rig workers to management workers. A semi-structured interview protocol taking 60 to 120 minutes was implemented with open-ended questions. Five main findings emerged. The first main finding was the higher the seriousness of the risk, the lower the clarity of the unfolding crisis situation. The second main finding was that workers alter their perception of an event after the crisis has been averted to make it seem less serious than it was. The third finding was that workers believe someone will always come along to solve an impending problem. The fourth finding was that workers who are experienced are more proactive, flexible, and less likely to be bound by rules. The fifth finding is that the rulebook is a double-edged sword. The first recommendation was to ensure that all rigs have secondary ballast control systems. The second recommendation was to ensure that employee training provides awareness to the components of the decision-making model, specifically, those that lead to a crisis. Recommended future studies could include testing the decision-making model in a crisis situation, such as the 2010 British Petroleum oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, to determine its fit with other crises in other industries. Also, it was recommended that a comparative study of oil and gas workers in the North Sea offshore oil industry take place.The purpose of the qualitative case study was to (a) explore crisis decision-making that occurs in a virtual environment such as the Ocean Ranger offshore oil rig by (a) assessing the official report of the incident, (b) conducting interviews with oil and gas industry workers, and based upon results, (c) developing a model for crisis decision-making in a distributed organization. The model includes a breakdown of sensemaking during a crisis, organizational structure, communication and collaboration, both virtual and face-to-face, during a crisis, as well as normalization. The model also includes definitions of responsibility and variables that can assist in determining whether or not a situation is a crisis, and the impact of this determination on the decision-making apparatus. The collection of data was implemented with interviews of 37 oil rig workers and examination of the official report of the Royal Commission for the Ocean Ranger Disaster. Interviewees ranged from oil rig workers to management workers. A semi-structured interview protocol taking 60 to 120 minutes was implemented with open-ended questions. Five main findings emerged. The first main finding was the higher the seriousness of the risk, the lower the clarity of the unfolding crisis situation. The second main finding was that workers alter their perception of an event after the crisis has been averted to make it seem less serious than it was. The third finding was that workers believe someone will always come along to solve an impending problem. The fourth finding was that workers who are experienced are more proactive, flexible, and less likely to be bound by rules. The fifth finding is that the rulebook is a double-edged sword. The first recommendation was to ensure that all rigs have secondary ballast control systems. The second recommendation was to ensure that employee training provides awareness to the components of the decision-making model, specifically, those that lead to a crisis. Recommended future studies could include testing the decision-making model in a crisis situation, such as the 2010 British Petroleum oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, to determine its fit with other crises in other industries. Also, it was recommended that a comparative study of oil and gas workers in the North Sea offshore oil industry take place

Disaster management from a POM perspective : mapping a new domain

We have reviewed disaster management research papers published in major operations management, management science, operations research, supply chain management and transportation/ logistics journals. In reviewing these papers our objective is to assess and present the macro level “architectural blue print” of disaster management research with the hope that it will attract new researchers and motivate established researchers to contribute to this important field. The secondary objective is to bring this disaster research to the attention of disaster administrators so that disasters are managed more efficiently and more effectively. We have mapped the disaster management research on the following five attributes of a disaster: (1) Disaster Management Function (decision making process, prevention and mitigation, evacuation, humanitarian logistics, casualty management, and recovery and restoration), (2) Time of Disaster (before, during and after), (3) Type of Disaster (accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, terrorism and wildfires etc.), (4) Data Type (Field and Archival data, Real data and Hypothetical data), and (5) Data Analysis Technique (bidding models, decision analysis, expert systems, fuzzy system analysis, game theory, heuristics, mathematical programming, network flow models, queuing theory, simulation and statistical analysis). We have done cross tabulations of data among these five parameters to gain greater insights in disaster research. Recommendations for future research are provided

Disaster management and its economic implications

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements in der Operational Research Literatur aufzuzeigen. Katastrophenmanagement umfasst in diesem Zusammenhang einerseits Naturkatastrophen wie geophysikalische und hydro-meteorologische Katastrophen, technologische Katastrophen wie industrielle Unfälle, Transportunfälle und sonstige Unfälle, und andererseits die verschiedenen Formen des Terrorismus, allgemeinen Terrorismus sowie Bioterrorismus. Da die Anzahl und das Ausmaß von Katastrophen immer weiter zunehmen ist auch eine immer größere Notwendigkeit für die Entwicklung, den Einsatz und die wirtschaftliche Beurteilung der jeweiligen Strategien gegeben. Der erste Teil dieser Arbeit gibt einen Überblick über die Literatur im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements und umfasst Simulation, Katastrophenmanagement in Krankenhäusern und die Rolle von Versicherungen im Katastrophenmanagementprozess. Im zweiten Teil wird eine Taxonomie entwickelt, deren Kategorien auf den Modellen und Ergebnissen der Literatur beruhen. Einerseits werden allgemeine Modelleigenschaften wie die Ebene im Katastrophenmanagementprozess, der Modelltyp und die Anwendungsgebiete der Modelle untersucht. Andererseits stellen die Art der Intervention und die Anwendbarkeit für die unterschiedlichen Katastrophenklassen weitere Kategorien der Taxonomie dar. Es wurden 90 Artikel, die beispielhaft für die Forschungsrichtungen im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements der letzten 25 Jahre stehen, ausgewählt, und entsprechend den jeweiligen Kategorien der Taxonomie zugeordnet. Das Hauptaugenmerk der Taxonomie liegt auf der wirtschaftlichen Analyse, die wirksamkeitsbezogene, ressourcenbezogene und kostenbezogene Parameter umfasst. Es wird gezeigt ob und welche wirtschaftliche Analyse wie beispielsweise die Kosten-Nutzwert- Analyse, die Kosten-Wirksamkeits-Analyse und die Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse angewendet wird um die in den Artikeln beschriebenen Interventionen zu evaluieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass erhebliche Verbesserungen für die verschiedenen Katastrophentypen und in den verschiedenen Situationen erzielt werden können. Eingeschränkte Datenverfügbarkeit schränkt in vielen Fällen die Einsetzbarkeit der Modelle in realen Situationen ein. Im Allgemeinen ist erkennbar, dass Kooperation und Koordination zwischen den beteiligten Einheiten ausschlaggebend für den zeitgerechten und effizienten Einsatz der knappen Ressourcen sind. Oftmals erzielt der gemeinsame Einsatz mehrerer Maßnahme ein deutlich besseres Ergebnis als der Einsatz von lediglich einem einzigen Instrument. Die Taxonomie unterstreicht dass trotz der großen Fülle an Literatur im Bereich des Katastrophenmanagements nur wenige Autoren auf die Kosten-Nutzwert-Analyse, die Kosten-Wirksamkeits-Analyse und die Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse als Hilfsmittel zur wirtschaftlichen Analyse zurückgreifen. In Zukunft, um Interventionen erfolgreich evaluieren zu können oder die beste aus mehreren Interventionen bestimmen zu können wird es immer wichtiger werden, diese Art von wirtschaftlichen Analysen anzuwenden.This thesis intends to demonstrate current research directions in the field of disaster management in the Operational Research literature. Disaster management in this context comprises the management of natural, such as geophysical and hydro-meteorological, and technological disasters, such as industrial accidents, transportation accidents, and miscellaneous accidents, as well as the management of the different terrorism forms, general terrorism and bioterrorism. As the occurrence of disasters is getting more and more frequent and the accumulated loss of these events is getting higher and higher, there is a strong need for the development, implication and economic evaluation of strategies to counter these disasters. In the first part of the thesis, a general overview of the literature is given, including a focus on simulation, disaster management in hospitals, and the role of insurances in the disaster management process. The second part encompasses the taxonomy which focuses on models and outcomes presented in the literature. As a result of the review of the literature, appropriate categories for the disaster management taxonomy are derived. On the one hand, an overview of general model features, i.e., the level of disaster management, model type and methods of application is given. On the other hand, the type of intervention used and the practicability for different disaster types are discussed. 90 papers, illustrative main examples of the research directions of the last 25 years, were selected for deeper investigation and classified according to the main criteria analyzed in the articles. The main focus of the taxonomy lies on the economic analysis, which encompasses effectiveness-related, resource-related, and cost-related parameters and shows the type of economic analysis used in the literature. We analyze whether economic analysis, i.e., costutility, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit are used to investigate different interventions and what type of analysis has been chosen by the authors. Policy implications and results show that considerable improvements can be achieved for different disastrous events and in different situations. Limited data availability constrains the outcomes of the models and their applicability to real-world situations. In general, cooperation and coordination of the entities involved are crucial to guarantee timely and efficient assignment of scarce resources. Furthermore, different authors confirm that a combination of various measures often achieves a better outcome than if tools are used autonomously. The taxonomy has underlined that although there exists a vast disaster management literature dealing with various problems related to mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery from disasters, there are only a few authors evaluating the actions taken through economic analyses such cost-utility, cost-effectiveness, or cost-benefit analysis. In the future, to be able to evaluate interventions, or to figure out the most effective intervention among several interventions, it is crucial to stronger rely on the abovementioned economic analyses