2012 Articles
Models for managing the impact of an influenza epidemic
We present methodologies for managing the impact of workforce absenteeism on the operational continuity of public services during an influenza epidemic. From a planner’s perspective, it is of paramount importance to design contingency plans to administer resources on the face of such an event; however, there is significant complexity underlying this task, stemming from uncertainty on the likely severity and evolution of the epidemic. Our approach involves the procurement of additional resources in response to a robust model of the evolution of the epidemic. We develop insights on the structure of optimal robust strategies and on practical rules-of-thumb that can be applied should an epidemic take place. We present numerical examples that illustrate the effectiveness of our results.
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Files
- Bienstock_Influenza_OR.pdf application/pdf 776 KB Download File
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
- Published Here
- October 29, 2012
Notes
Submitted to Operations Research.