Locating emergency services with priority rules: The priority queuing covering location problem

One of the assumptions of the Capacitated Facility Location Problem (CFLP) is thatdemand is known and fixed. Most often, this is not the case when managers take somestrategic decisions such as locating facilities and assigning demand points to thosefacilities. In this paper we consider demand as stochastic and we model each of thefacilities as an independent queue. Stochastic models of manufacturing systems anddeterministic location models are put together in order to obtain a formula for thebacklogging probability at a potential facility location.Several solution techniques have been proposed to solve the CFLP. One of the mostrecently proposed heuristics, a Reactive Greedy Adaptive Search Procedure, isimplemented in order to solve the model formulated. We present some computationalexperiments in order to evaluate the heuristics performance and to illustrate the use ofthis new formulation for the CFLP. The paper finishes with a simple simulationexercise.

Locating emergency services with different priorities: The priority queuing covering location problem

Previous covering models for emergency service consider all the calls to be of the sameimportance and impose the same waiting time constraints independently of the service's priority.This type of constraint is clearly inappropriate in many contexts. For example, in urban medicalemergency services, calls that involve danger to human life deserve higher priority over calls formore routine incidents. A realistic model in such a context should allow prioritizing the calls forservice.In this paper a covering model which considers different priority levels is formulated andsolved. The model heritages its formulation from previous research on Maximum CoverageModels and incorporates results from Queuing Theory, in particular Priority Queuing. Theadditional complexity incorporated in the model justifies the use of a heuristic procedure.

The materiality of the immaterial. Services sectors and CO2 emissions in Uruguay

This paper analyzes the carbon dioxide emissions of the services sectors subsystem of Uruguay in 2004. Services, with the exception of transport, are often considered intangible because of their low level of direct emissions. However, the provision of services requires inputs produced by other sectors, including several highly materialintensive sectors. Through input–output analysis we investigate the relationship between the services subsystem and the rest of the economy as regards carbon dioxide emissions. This approach allows us to study the importance of the set of services branches as a unit in the economic structure as well as to analyze in detail the relationship between the branches. The results depict that services’ direct emissions are the main component, as a consequence of transport-related sectors. However, the pollution that the services subsystem makes the rest of the economy produce is very significant, and it is almost all explained by non-transport-related sectors. This analysis is useful for determining the sectors in which mitigation policies are more effective, and whether they would be better tackled through technical improvements and better practices or through demand policies.

Anàlisi bàsic de rutes òptimes a zones de catàstrofe

L'objectiu del projecte és desenvolupar un Sistema d'Informació Geogràfica (SIG) d'ús senzill, amb la finalitat de generar cartografia actualitzada de manera gairebé instantània que serveixi de recolzament a l'ajuda internacional desplegada en un país després d'una catàstrofe natural. La cartografia serà d'Haití, com a exemple de zona afectada per un terratrèmol. Amb el SIG els equips d'emergència podran indicar aquelles vies tallades, per poder tenir cartografia actualitzada. Igualment podran indicar un punt origen i un punt destí i el SIG els indicarà la ruta més curta, tenint en compte les carreteres tallades. El programari utilitzat per desenvolupar el projecte és GeoMedia Professional, Microsoft Access i Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. S'ha generat cartografia d'Haití en format vectorial.

Dead-End Jobs or Career Opportunities? Advancement opportunities in call centers

Employment in call centers has grown significantly throughout the world over the past 15 years. In debates about the quality of these new jobs, there are few studies that specifically address promotion opportunities. Using a survey of over 2400 call centers in 16 countries, this paper documents levels and analyzes factors shaping promotions in call centers, and discusses implications for promotions in the service sector generally. On average, less than 10% of call center agents are promoted in any year--5.7% promoted internally to the call center, and 4% promoted elsewhere in the business. Firms that have more complex labor processes and require agents to have higher levels of firm-specific knowledge tend to also have greater promotion opportunities, which might be expected. There are also unexpected findings, including that increased autonomy in the workplace often provides a ‘substitute' to advancement opportunities, and that unionization is associated with fewer advancement opportunities within call centers, though more advancement opportunities to other parts of the business. Key words: promotions, service industries, call centers.

Agents mòbils en situacions d'emergència: mobilitat d'etiquetes de triatge

En les actuacions de rescat en emergències amb un gran nombre de víctimes, una de les primeres tasques a realitzar pels serveis sanitaris és la de triar-les en funció del seu estat i la urgència amb que han de ser tractades. En el grup SeNDA es treballa en un sistema d’agents mòbils que automatitza el mecanisme manual de triatge, fent ús de dispositius electrònics i una xarxa MANET com a canal de comunicació. En aquest projecte es proposa un sistema de gestió de mobilitat pels agents que transporten dades de víctimes fins al centre de coordinació, juntament amb un mecanisme de control d’aquests agents totalment transparent a l’usuari.

E-government and Public Services : a Case Study of the Inter-administrative Portal CAT365. Research report (sythesis document)

Aquest estudi analitza els usos de les TIC a l'administració autonòmica catalana. De forma més específica, l'estudi se centra en la interacció entre l'ús d'un vessant concret de les TIC, la xarxa Internet, per part de l'administració pública, i determinats aspectes centrals d'aquest tipus d'institucions: la seva organització i estructura internes, la provisió de serveis públics o la relació amb altres agents socials. Hem analitzat, doncs, el fenomen del govern electrònic en el marc particular de la Generalitat de Catalunya, estudiant-ne el grau de desenvolupament i penetració, les seves característiques més remarcables i els problemes més importants que s'hi plantegen. El projecte de recerca es concreta en un estudi de cas sobre un projecte d'innovació específic però de gran abast, que es trobava en el moment de realització de l'estudi en la seva primera fase d'implementació: el projecte Administració Oberta de Catalunya (AOC). Concretament ens hem centrat en el vessant d'aquesta iniciativa pública que es concretava en la creació d'un portal interadministratiu a Internet, el portal www.cat365.net, destinat a proveir electrònicament serveis públics de totes les administracions que operen a Catalunya. L'estudi analitza les transformacions internes de l'administració que s'hi poden trobar associades i els elements que les condicionen, tant positivament com negativa. Igualment, intentem analitzem el que aquestes transformacions poden suposar per a la relació entre els ciutadans i les institucions públiques.

Health care provider choice in the case of patient-initiated contacts. An extended version of discrete choice of model demand

This paper analyzes the nature of health care provider choice inthe case of patient-initiated contacts, with special reference toa National Health Service setting, where monetary prices are zeroand general practitioners act as gatekeepers to publicly financedspecialized care. We focus our attention on the factors that mayexplain the continuously increasing use of hospital emergencyvisits as opposed to other provider alternatives. An extendedversion of a discrete choice model of demand for patient-initiatedcontacts is presented, allowing for individual and town residencesize differences in perceived quality (preferences) betweenalternative providers and including travel and waiting time asnon-monetary costs. Results of a nested multinomial logit model ofprovider choice are presented. Individual choice betweenalternatives considers, in a repeated nested structure, self-care,primary care, hospital and clinic emergency services. Welfareimplications and income effects are analyzed by computingcompensating variations, and by simulating the effects of userfees by levels of income. Results indicate that compensatingvariation per visit is higher than the direct marginal cost ofemergency visits, and consequently, emergency visits do not appearas an inefficient alternative even for non-urgent conditions.

The P-median problem in a changing network: The case of Barcelona

In this paper a p--median--like model is formulated to address theissue of locating new facilities when there is uncertainty. Severalpossible future scenarios with respect to demand and/or the travel times/distanceparameters are presented. The planner will want a strategy of positioning thatwill do as ``well as possible'' over the future scenarios. This paper presents a discrete location model formulation to address this P--Medianproblem under uncertainty. The model is applied to the location of firestations in Barcelona.

Probabilistic maximal covering location-allocation models with constrained waiting time or queue length for congested systems

When dealing with the design of service networks, such as healthand EMS services, banking or distributed ticket selling services, thelocation of service centers has a strong influence on the congestion ateach of them, and consequently, on the quality of service. In this paper,several models are presented to consider service congestion. The firstmodel addresses the issue of the location of the least number of single--servercenters such that all the population is served within a standard distance,and nobody stands in line for a time longer than a given time--limit, or withmore than a predetermined number of other clients. We then formulateseveral maximal coverage models, with one or more servers per service center.A new heuristic is developed to solve the models and tested in a 30--nodesnetwork.

Location models in the public sector

The past four decades have witnessed an explosive growth in the field of networkbased facilitylocation modeling. This is not at all surprising since location policy is one of the mostprofitable areas of applied systems analysis in regional science and ample theoretical andapplied challenges are offered. Location-allocation models seek the location of facilitiesand/or services (e.g., schools, hospitals, and warehouses) so as to optimize one or severalobjectives generally related to the efficiency of the system or to the allocation of resources.This paper concerns the location of facilities or services in discrete space or networks, thatare related to the public sector, such as emergency services (ambulances, fire stations, andpolice units), school systems and postal facilities. The paper is structured as follows: first,we will focus on public facility location models that use some type of coverage criterion,with special emphasis in emergency services. The second section will examine models based onthe P-Median problem and some of the issues faced by planners when implementing thisformulation in real world locational decisions. Finally, the last section will examine newtrends in public sector facility location modeling.

The evolution of inequity in the access to health care in Spain: 1987-2001

This paper reports an analysis of the evolution of equity in access to health care in Spain over the period 1987-2001, a time span covering the development of the modern Spanish National Health System. Our measures of access are the probabilities of visiting a doctor, using emergency services and being hospitalised. For these three measures we obtain indices of horizontal inequity from microeconometric models of utilization that exploit the individual information in the Spanish National Health Surveys of 1987 and 2001. We find that by 2001 the system has improved in the sense that differences in income no longer lead to different access given the same level of need. However, the tenure of private health insurance leads to differences in access given the same level of need, and its contribution to inequity has increased over time, both because insurance is more concentrated among the rich and because the elasticity of utilization for the three services has increased too.

Telemedicine Experience for Chronic Care in COPD

Information and telecommunication technologies are called to play a major role in the changes that healthcare systems have to face to cope with chronic disease. This paper reports a telemedicine experience for the home care of chronic patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and an integrated system designed to carry out this experience. To determine the impact on health, the chronic care telemedicine system was used during one year (2002) with 157 COPD patients in a clinical experiment; endpoints were readmissions and mortality. Patients in the intervention group were followed up at their homes and could contact the care team at any time through the call center. The care team shared a unique electronic chronic patient record (ECPR) accessible through the web-based patient management module or the home visit units. Results suggest that integrated home telemedicine services can support health professionals caring for patients with chronic disease, and improve their health.We have found that simple telemedicine services (ubiquitous access to ECPR, ECPR shared by care team, accessibility to case manager, problem reporting integrated in ECPR) can increase the number of patients that were not readmitted (51% intervention, 33% control), are acceptable to professionals, and involve low installation and exploitation costs. Further research is needed to determine the role of telemonitoring and televisit services for this kind of patients.

A Markov chain analysis of emotional exchange in voice-to-voice communication: Testing for the mimicry hypothesis of emotional contagion

Mimicry is a central plank of the emotional contagion theory; however, it was only tested with facial and postural emotional stimuli. This study explores the existence of mimicry in voice-to-voice communication by analyzing 8,747 sequences of emotional displays between customers and employees in a call-center context. We listened live to 967 telephone inter-actions, registered the sequences of emotional displays, and analyzed them with a Markov chain. We also explored other propositions of emotional contagion theory that were yet to be tested in vocal contexts. Results supported that mimicry is significantly present at all levels. Our findings fill an important gap in the emotional contagion theory; have practical implications regarding voice-to-voice interactions; and open doors for future vocal mimicry research.

Models de simulació per coordinar serveis d'emergència

El projecte exposat té com a propòsit definir i implementar un model de simulació basat en la coordinació i assignació dels serveis d’emergència en accidents de trànsit. La definició del model s’ha realitzat amb l’ús de les Xarxes de Petri Acolorides i la implementació amb el software Rockwell Arena 7.0. El modelatge de la primera simulació ens mostra un model teòric basat en cues mentre que el segon, mostra un model més complet i real gràcies a la connexió mitjançant la plataforma Corba a una base de dades amb informació geogràfica de les flotes i de les rutes. Com a resultat de l’estudi i amb l’ajuda de GoogleEarth, podem realitzar simulacions gràfiques per veure els accidents generats, les flotes dels serveis i el moviment dels vehicles des de les bases fins als accidents.