Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

Allocating the fixed cost:an approach based on data envelopment analysis and cooperative game

Allocating the fixed cost among a set of users in a fair way is an important issue both in management and economic research. Recently, Du et al. (Eur J Oper Res 235(1): 206–214, 2014) proposed a novel approach for allocating the fixed cost based on the game cross-efficiency method by taking the game relations among users in efficiency evaluation. This paper proves that the novel approach of Du et al. (Eur J Oper Res 235(1): 206–214, 2014) is equivalent to the efficiency maximization approach of Li et al. (Omega 41(1): 55–60, 2013), and may exist multiple optimal cost allocation plans. Taking into account the game relations in the allocation process, this paper proposes a cooperative game approach, and uses the nucleolus as a solution to the proposed cooperative game. The proposed approach in this paper is illustrated with a dataset from the prior literature and a real dataset of a steel and iron enterprise in China

Optimal path selection of innovation resource allocation in China’s regions with shared inputs

As an effective form of interaction between innovation subjects and resources, the regional innovation network’s optimal allocation of resources is the key to improving national innovation capacity. According to the innovation value chain, the process of resource allocation in innovation can be divided into two correlative sub-systems: the knowledge innovation stage (KIS) and the achievements commercialisation stage (ACS). To evaluate regional innovation efficiency, a two-stage network data envelopment analysis model with shared inputs is used, with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to analyse the improvement path of resource allocation efficiency from the dimensions of regional environment and network structure. The results show that efficiency in the KIS is higher than in the ACS, and the efficiency scores for most regions in China are better under the model with shared inputs. The efficiency of innovative resource allocation is affected by the cross-action of seven factors: regional economic development, infrastructure, policy system, social culture, network scale, network openness, and network centrality. To achieve highefficiency resource allocation, regions should build an innovation network that matches their environmental characteristics. These findings provide theoretical guidance for formulating innovative resource allocation policies suitable for different regions

Framework for integrated planning of bus and paratransit services in Indian cities

Public transport services in India and many other developing countries are provided by a combination of formal-Government led public transport systems and informal paratransit or Intermediate Public Transport (IPT) systems, which offer shuttle services along high demand corridors with passengers boarding and alighting at multiple points. Despite limited Government support, paratransit systems continue to thrive in many cities serving a crucial shared mobility need of users, without which cities would have more private vehicle usage. Due to their informal nature and the perceived competition to formal public transport systems, they have traditionally been either excluded from the public transport planning processes or designed as a feeder service to the formal transit system. The current thesis recognises paratransit’s role in serving end to end travel demand needs, particularly in developing economies with limited public transport supply and not just being a feeder to the formal public transport system. Hence, we develop an integrated planning framework that enables formal and informal public transport systems to operate as complementary systems towards meeting the mobility needs of the city. We proved an integrated planning framework based on comprehensive understanding of the demand and supply characteristics of both formal and informal systems which currently operate independently to realign services and complement each other. The tactical planning stage of public transport planning i.e. frequency setting was identified as the ideal stage of planning for integration of the two types of services. This will ensure continuity of their existing route networks and at the same time allow for paratransit services’ flexibility to switch operations between routes. Visakhapatnam, a representative medium sized Indian city with a significant presence of formal public transport in the form of city bus services and paratransit services provided by three-wheeler auto-rickshaws with a seating capacity of three to six passengers, was selected as the case city to demonstrate the methodology. A household survey based data collection and analysis methodology was adopted to analyse the socio-economic and travel demand characteristics of city bus and paratransit users. The variables impacting users’ choice between these two systems were derived through binary logistic regression. The high frequency and low occupancy paratransit systems were more popular among shorter trips, while longer trips preferred the fixed table bus systems. The operational characteristics of bus and paratransit systems were derived through a combination of primary surveys with paratransit operators and secondary data on the city bus operations. Data regarding their network of operation, services offered, passenger demand and revenue generated were collected for analysis. Buses perform a service function in the city by operating throughout the day and on a wider network, while paratransit operates with a profit motive only on high demand corridors and during peak hours. A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based methodology was adopted to compare the performance efficiency of the two systems using a set of input and output indicators that define the performance of the two systems. Paratransit operations were identified to be more efficient compared to buses, due to their demand responsive operations. The lower efficiency of buses was also due to their service obligation to the city to provide affordable services throughout the day, even in areas with low demand. A bi-level transit assignment and frequency optimisation framework is developed to integrate formal bus and paratransit services. The lower-level of the model solves for the multi- modal transit assignment problem while the upper level solves for the integrated frequency optimisation problem. The transit assignment problem was solved from the users perspective i.e. to minimise their travel time through the user-equilibrium method. The frequency optimisation problem was solved using an integer programming formulation with the objective of minimising operational cost of bus and paratransit systems while meeting constraints like the travel demand on any link. The outputs from the optimisation exercise were used to quantify the impact of the public transport system at various levels i.e. users total travel time spent in the system, operators cost of providing the services and the overall impact on the society by estimating its road space requirement and emissions. Alternative user demand and transit supply scenarios were tested to assess their impacts on the society. The results show significant operational cost benefits of an integrated transit assignment and frequency planning approach where paratransit provides demand responsive services for short distance trips while formal public transport provides fixed schedule services on with broader network coverage. The analysis established the complimentary role played by bus and paratransit systems in meeting users travel demands. Therefore, it is recommended that cities harness both the systems towards meeting increasing travel needs of developing economies. Formal transit will continue to be the core of the public transport system, providing fixed route services, while paratransit can augment its capacity on high demand corridors and during peak hours. The planning and frequency optimisation framework developed in this thesis can help cities in identifying the modal-mix of fixed route public transport and on-demand services

Efficiency decomposition for multi-level multi-components production technologies

This paper addresses the efficiency measurement of firms composed by multiple components, and assessed at different decision levels. In particular it develops models for three levels of decision/production: the subunit (production division/process), the DMU (firm) and the industry (system). For each level, inefficiency is measured using a directional distance function and the developed measures are contrasted with existing radial models. The paper also investigates how the efficiency scores computed at different levels are related to each other by proposing a decomposition into exhaustive and mutually exclusive components. The proposed method is illustrated using data on Portuguese hospitals. Since most of the topics addressed in this paper are related to more general network structures, avenues for future research are proposed and discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio