CAREER: Improving Service Systems through Real-time and Delayed Information

该学院早期职业发展计划（Career）奖支持旨在通过使服务提供商有效地向客户传播有关延误的信息来减少关键服务拥堵的基础研究。这项研究将通过更好地获得医疗保健和应急资源，减少城市交通拥堵，促进国家健康和繁荣。通过智能手机应用程序和显示信息技术提供的实时信息已经彻底改变了许多服务系统与客户互动的方式。这个项目将促进人们了解如何利用这些信息来改善这些服务的可用性和可及性。该教育计划包括有针对性的外展努力，以扩大代表性不足的群体在工程研究中的参与。该项目将研究向潜在客户提供系统状态延迟信息的排队网络。研究目标是提供这种系统性能的严格近似。本研究将采用多项logit模型选择模型来模拟指数和一般排队模型中的顾客到达行为。流体限制和扩散近似将用于模拟拥挤的队列，其中预期的客户行为将最严重地影响排队动力学。有限容量排队模型也将在延迟信息的背景下进行研究。将通过模拟以及与现实世界交通系统和医院急诊科的观测数据进行比较来评估近似值。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports fundamental research intended to reduce congestion in critical services by enabling service providers to effectively disseminate information about delays to their customers. This research will advance the national health and prosperity by enabling better access to healthcare and emergency resources and reducing congestion in urban mobility. The availability of real time information through smartphone apps and display message technology has revolutionized the way many service systems interact with their customers. This project will advance the understanding of how such information can be used to improve the availability and accessibility of these services. The educational plan includes targeted outreach efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering research.This project will study queueing networks in which delayed information on system state is offered to potential customers. The research objective is to provide rigorous approximations of the performance of such systems. The research will incorporate a multinomial logit model choice model to emulate customer arrival behavior in exponential and general queueing models. Fluid limit and diffusion approximations will be used to model congested queues, where anticipated customer behavior will most heavily influence queueing dynamics. Finite capacity queueing models will also be studied in the context of delayed information. The approximations will be assessed via simulation as well as comparisons with observational data from real-world transportation systems and hospital emergency departments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.