Overloaded Queuing Systems: Service Capacity Allocation and Incentive Issues

超载的排队系统：服务能力分配和激励问题

• 批准号: 436156-2013
• 负责人: Ding, Yichuan
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2015-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=574296
• 关键词: Overloaded; Queuing; Systems; Service; Capacity

Service capacity in units such as call centers or health clinics, typically cannot meet the demand. As a result, some customers end up abandoning queues intentionally or passively without being served. A queuing system with a demand that is larger than the service capacity is said to be overloaded. By acknowledging the fact that only a proportion of customers acquire service, the major decision facing an overworked service provider is to develop a system that assigns priority. Since the attributes of customers and servers, and their interactions may not be homogenous, the First-In-First-Out (FIFO) discipline may not suit every situation. For example, a gravely ill person will take precedence over someone else in a hospital waiting room. In such cases, service providers may compromise the FIFO rule in the interests of efficiency metrics, such as health and revenue. This proposal aims to develop methods for rationing the scarce service resources in an overloaded system to achieve the desired efficiency-fairness tradeoff for meeting the needs of the service provider. In particular, I aim to characterize the relationship between the score formula that has been used to rank customers in the queue, and the outcome in relation to specific efficiency and fairness metrics. Moreover, the proposed research investigates how to allocate services compatible with customers' incentives, given that a customer may prefer certain types of services. My anticipated results can be applied to a broad class of overloaded service systems. One promising application is the design of rules for allocating organs to patients on transplant waitlists. Since 2008, the Canadian federal and provincial governments have been actively soliciting recommendations related to implementing an integrated organ and tissue donation and transplantation (OTDT) system. One particularly sensitive issue is the development of a nationally coordinated policy for allocating cadaver organs; one that balances two conflicting objectives, including optimizing transplant outcomes and providing equitable access to patients on the waitlist. My research aims to address this issue.

呼叫中心或诊所等单位的服务能力通常无法满足需求。因此，一些顾客最终故意或被动地放弃排队，而没有得到服务。需求大于服务能力的排队系统称为超载。通过承认只有一部分客户获得服务这一事实，过度劳累的服务提供商面临的主要决策是开发一种分配优先级的系统。由于客户和服务器的属性以及它们的交互可能不是同质的，先进先出(FIFO)规则可能不适合每种情况。例如，在医院候诊室里，一个重病患者会优先于其他人。在这种情况下，服务提供商可能会为了健康和收入等效率指标而妥协FIFO规则。 该提案旨在开发在超载的系统中配给稀缺服务资源的方法，以达到期望的效率-公平折衷，以满足服务提供者的需求。特别是，我的目标是描述用于对队列中的客户进行排名的得分公式与与特定效率和公平度量相关的结果之间的关系。此外，拟议的研究调查了如何分配与客户的激励相兼容的服务，假设客户可能更喜欢某些类型的服务。 我的预期结果可以应用于一大类超载的服务系统。一个有希望的应用是设计为移植等待名单上的患者分配器官的规则。自2008年以来，加拿大联邦和省政府一直在积极征求与实施综合器官和组织捐赠与移植(OTDT)系统有关的建议。一个特别敏感的问题是制定一项全国协调的身体器官分配政策；一个平衡两个相互冲突的目标的政策，包括优化移植结果和为等待名单上的患者提供公平的机会。我的研究旨在解决这个问题。