OR vice: Forecasting and classification techniques for narcotics interdiction

Counternarcotics interdiction efforts have traditionally relied on historically determined sorting criteria or “best guess” to find and classify suspected smuggling traffic. We present a more quantitative approach which incorporates customized database applications, graphics software and statistical modeling techniques to develop forecasting and classification models. Preliminary results show that statistical methodology can improve interdiction rates and reduce forecast error. The idea of predictive modeling is thus gaining support in the counterdrug community. The problem is divided into sea, air and land forecasting, only part of which will be addressed here. The maritime problem is solved using multiple regression in lieu of multivariate time series. This model predicts illegal boat counts by behavior and geographic region. We developed support software to present the forecasts and to automate the process of performing periodic model updates. During the period, the model was in use at. Coast Guard Headquarters. Because of deterrence provided by improved intervention, the vessel seizure rate declined from 1 every 36 hours to 1 every 6 months. Due in part to the success of the sea model, the maritime movement of marijuana has ceased to be a major threat. The air problem is more complex, and required us to locally design data collection and display software. Intelligence analysts are using a customized relational database application with a map overlay to perform visual pattern recognition of smuggling routes. We are solving the modeling portion of the air problem using multiple regression for regional forecasts of traffic density, and discriminant analysis to develop tactical models that classify “good guys” and “bad guys”. The air models are still under development, but we discuss some modeling considerations and preliminary results. The land problem is even more difficult, and data collection is still in progress.     

A new pattern of risk management: The Hyogo Framework for Action and Italian practise

On January 2005, the World Conference on Disaster Reduction adopted the “Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2025: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters” [UN-ISDR (United Nations, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), Disaster Risk and Sustainable Development: understanding the links between development, environment and natural hazards leading to disasters, World Summit on Sustainable Development, August–September 2002, Johannesburg, 2002]. This “white paper” seeks to promote “an effective integration of disaster risk considerations into sustainable development policies, planning and programming at all levels” [UN-ISDR (United Nations, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), Disaster Risk and Sustainable Development: understanding the links between development, environment and natural hazards leading to disasters, World Summit on Sustainable Development, August–September 2002, Johannesburg, 2002. p. 1] outlining a strategic and systematic approach to reduce vulnerabilities and risks to hazards.

The current paper discusses each aspect of the Hyogo approach in relation to the Italian experience. Italy represents an interesting case because of its multiple hazard environment, and the fact that it has developed an integrated approach to risk reduction planning. Strengths and weaknesses of the “Italian way” of dealing with risk are identified, and compared with the theoretical processes suggested by the framework. Implementation of selected key actions in Italy has helped identify a series of obstacles to progress, further defining the gap that still exists between theoretical framework and actual practise.

The various activities constituting “risk management” (viz., assessment, prevention, mitigation, monitoring, early warning, preparedness) are here considered in a comprehensive framework wherein each phase is connected to the others. The paper focuses on natural hazards, which are more frequent in Italy (landslides, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, natural soil erosion). The main results include:

• A new process for dealing with risk, using the framework for guidance, is identified. We track the reasons for Italy gradually adopting this process in dealing with her vulnerabilities to natural hazards.

• Those factors that appear to interfere with an integrated approach to risk management are identified as a function of selected experiences.

• Guidelines for analysing vulnerabilities to disaster in a multi-hazard, integrated context are proposed.

An extremal and information-theoretic characterization of some interzonal transfer models

The paper develops a method of deriving gravity models from extremal principles. The prototype result yields the most popular gravity flow model characterized by an extremal principle. This principle is also for the first time elucidated as an information-theoretic one of choosing the distribution of interzonal transfers which gives least “information” (in the technical sense) for discrimination against a distribution reflecting the “facility” (reciprocal of the “difficulty”) of travel between zones.     

Redistricting reformulated: A maximum interaction/minimum separation objective

Alternative objective functions to the population centroid type commonly employed in computerized political districting algorithms are suggested and discussed. Districtings based on maximum overlap of individuals' “action spaces” or on minimum aggregate length of interpersonal separations better represent the spatio-political notion of “compactness” than do those based on centroid measures. The traditional analogy between the warehouse location problem and the optimal districting problem may thus be an inappropriate one. The proposed reformulated optimal districting problem with a spatial interaction or interpersonal separation objective may be formally stated as a quadratic integer program. The solution to the program is seen, however, to be only one of several possible “optimal” political partitionings. Regardless of the specific compactness measure chosen, separate “mean” and “modal” districtings may exist.     

Budget decision making in large public school systems

This paper reviews and discusses results of a study of the budget process in fourteen large city school districts. Topics covered include incremental decision making, the use of “ratios” and “norms” in school budgeting, public participation in budgeting, relevant structural arrangements of local government, and the influence of boards of education on the allocation of resources. Finally, implications for the improvement of school management practices in large school districts are discussed.     

Information theoretic approach to migration analysis

Information theory is employed to look at certain aspects of migration. It is suggested that the dividedness of a population into “movers” and “stayers” is better assessed by migration entropy. The notion of “migration inequality” is introduced and the principle of minimum entropy suggested as a criterion for fitting migrations models. Canadian census data are utilized for illustration purposes.     

A note extending Grosskopf, Hayes, Taylor and Weber, “Anticipating the consequences of school reform: A new use of DEA”

The article cited in the current paper's title shows how to extend Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate future, as well as past and present, performance. This is accomplished by relaxing some of the constraints that reflect the presence of imposed regulations, and then re-computing the evaluations under these alternate conditions. We here extend this approach to account for “long-run” and “short-run” behaviors, and the related bodies of theory that play prominent roles in microeconomics.     

Social indicators and social accounts

This paper defines “social indicators” as statistics which have two denning characteristics. They are, first, measures of direct normative interest; that is, what the economist would call measures of “welfare” and “illfare”. Most existing government statistics are not of this type, because a large proportion of existing statistics are measures of government or other institutional activity, produced as a by-product of accounting or administrative routine. The second defining characteristic of a social indicator is that it should fit into a systematic scheme of classification or aggregation which would make possible a balanced assessment of socio-economic progress or retrogression in some broad area, as well as disaggregated and detailed study of particular problems.

The work in government on social indicators was designed in part to meet the needs of Toward a Social Report, a preliminary study of the condition of American society issued by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Superintendent of Documents, Wash. D.C. 20402; 1969). Social indicators can also fit, with other statistics, into a set of “policy accounts” or scheme of social accounting, which would relate social expenditures to the social indicator they were designed to affect. This would encourage broadened cost-benefit analysis and rational public decision-making.     

The computer imperative

“The Computer Imperative” has been defined as the necessity for the administrator to specify his goals, objectives, criteria, standards, rules, etc., in very explicit and operational terms as he seeks to devise a better management system, especially if computers will be used to implement portions of the system. It is essential that educational leaders be able to tell system designers and computer technologists what they want, and to do this they must know at least the rudiments of what is technically possible. Otherwise, the administrator in some sense is at the mercy of the technologist. Studying an administrative system as essentially an information system provides a useful model. To define who originates, processes, uses, or needs information is to describe much of the actual operation of administration. In a manual system, many rules and procedures can be left undefined, and intuition and experience can substitute effectively for logical precision. As computers are programed to assume certain basic transactional functions, the administrator must bear in mind that computers do only what they are told. It is therefore critically important to be able to describe what we want. Much of the “threat” of automation can be attributed to uneasy or uncomfortable recognition of this “imperative”.     

Design and implementation in major investments — A project network approach

Many investments in modern society take place in project networks. This article proposes a project network approach for describing the design and implementation processes in major investments. The design process of major projects is “fuzzy”, takes a long time, and is hard to capture. The implementation process, on the other hand, takes place in “semi-hierarchical” networks, and is easier to plan and control. The actor that controls the transformation of the political design process into the implementation process has a unique strategic position in the dynamically changing network. This means linking processes that are characterized by separate logic and network structures. Data from processes of design and implementation of three shopping malls illustrate the theoretical framework.     

The generation of doctorates and their feedback into higher education

The dynamic effects of alternative manpower policies and programs can be “pretested” in a computer based simulation. It is generally recognized that the production of Doctorates depends to a large degree on the Doctorate-holding faculty. Because the doctorate holders are in great demand by the other sectors of the economy, a circular or a “feedback” situation exists. The problem is further complicated by the availability of developed student talent and by various socioeconomic conditions existing at different periods of time within two or three decades prior to the time a study is made.

This paper attempts to develop a conceptual and a mathematical model to study the production of Doctorates, Masters' and Baccalaureate degrees and their feedback into higher education. The model consisting of over 200 non-linear difference equations is programmed for computer simulation and validation against historical data. Currently simulation is used to describe what has happened in the past. Once this phase is accomplished, the model can be used to prescribe what will happen in the future with a fair level of confidence.     

Levels of strategic purchasing: Impact on supply integration and performance

The growing importance of supply chain management has led to an increasing recognition of the strategic role of purchasing, which has recently evolved and expanded from “buying” to “procurement” and “supply management”. In this study, we chart our sample firms’ advance in strategic purchasing, characterized by the strategic focus, strategic involvement of the purchasing function and the status and visibility of the purchasing professionals, into three stages.This study provides strong empirical support for the importance of strategic purchasing by showing that, by moving towards the more advanced stages, firms at the nascent stage of strategic purchasing can achieve better supply integration, a second-order construct composed of four facets of relational, process, information, and cross-organizational team integration. Our analyses further reveal that strategic purchasing can have a profound impact on supply chain performance for both buyer and supplier firms.     

Supply-management maturity, cost savings and purchasing absorptive capacity: Testing the procurement–performance link

The relationship between the development level a purchasing organisation has reached—maturity—and its impact on the performance of a firm has received only limited attention until now. We conducted extensive purchasing audits using a comprehensive tool to assess firms’ maturity level. These firms’ performance was then measured by their success in a purchasing cost-reduction programme. The results showed a highly significant relationship between purchasing's maturity level and cost-reduction results. Somewhat counter-intuitively, larger saving potential was identified in more developed firms. This finding may be explained by a new concept called “purchasing absorptive capacity”. If an organisation's maturity is too low, the introduction of best practices, such as an innovative cost-reduction method, may fail.     

Towards an holistic understanding of disruptions in Operations Management

The paper reviews the literature on maintenance management, integrates key dimensions of maintenance within a taxonomy of maintenance configurations, and explores the impact of differing configurations on contextual factors and operational performance. “Prevention”, “hard maintenance integration” and “soft maintenance integration” were identified as key maintenance variables. Data were collected from 253 Swedish manufacturing companies, and three distinct clusters were identified. “Proactive Maintainers” emphasized preventive maintenance policies. “IT Maintainers” relied on computerized and company-wide integrated information systems for maintenance. “Maintenance Laggers” emphasized all maintenance dimensions to lesser extent than the others. The importance of maintenance prevention and integration differ between contexts. There were subtle performance differences across identified configurations, but preventive and integrated maintenance were more important for companies seeking competitive process control and flexibility. There existed no group with any great emphasis on all three maintenance dimensions, but attaining truly high performance may require a rare mix of the three dimensions. This mix of variables could constitute a hypothesized “World Class Maintenance” group.     

Mathematical analysis applied to school attendance areas

The objective of this paper is to develop a generalized mathematical model of pupil assignment within school districts. This model can then be used to examine various policies of student integration. Proposed bussing schemes, school location policies, educational parks, attendance boundaries, etc., can be tested for cost, travel time or other measures of efficiency. Extension to other areas of educational planning is feasible.

Mathematical programming techniques are used to assign resources (say school children) to facilities (say schools) subject to restrictions on facilities (say capacity limits) and resources (say a maximum travel time or a desirable range of school “mixtures”) so that a measure of performance, the “objective function” (say total cost or total time of travel) is optimized. The model is intended to allow examination of a wide range of objective functions and system constraints.     

Diagnoses by general practitioners: Accuracy and reliability

Only 10% of the results of consultations in primary care can be assigned to a confirmed diagnosis, while 50% remain “symptoms” and 40% are classified as “named syndromes” (“picture of a disease”). Moreover, less than 20% of the most frequent diagnoses account for more than 80% of the results of consultations. This finding, confirmed empirically during the last fifty years, suggests a power law distribution, with critical consequences for diagnosis and decision making in primary care.Our results prove that primary care has a severe “black swan” element in the vast majority of consultations. Some critical cases involving “avoidable life-threatening dangerous developments” (ALDD) such as myocardial disturbance, brain bleeding, and appendicitis may be masked by those often vague symptoms of health disorders ranked in the 20% most frequent diagnoses. The Braun distribution predicts the frequency of health disorders on a phenomenological level and reveals the “black swan” problem, but is not a tool by itself for arriving at accurate diagnoses. To improve predictions and enhance the reliability of diagnoses we propose standards of documentation and a systematic manner by which the risk facing a patient with an uncertain diagnosis can be evaluated (diagnostic protocols).Accepting a power law distribution in primary care implies the following: (1) primary care should no longer be defined only by “low prevalence” properties, but also by its black-swan-incidence-problem. This includes rethinking malpractice and the requirements of malpractice litigations; (2) at the level of everyday practice, diagnostic protocols are tools to make diagnoses more reliable; (3) at the level of epidemiology, Braun’s system of classification is useful for generating valid information by which predictions of risks can be improved.     

The air diffusion model as an urban planning tool

The air above a city is scarce and thus should be considered an urban resource. As a resource, air affects the urban population in several ways. First, the quality of this resource is important, it provides amenities to the urban dweller and enters into his site selection process. Second, because this mass is constantly in motion, it provides a diffusion mechanism through which externalities, or economic “bads”, are exchanged throughout the city.

In this article, we will develop a statistical air diffusion model that explicitly defines this exchange process. The model is then employed to examine two opposing theories of zoning justification—the property value theory and the planning theory. In examining the latter, the importance of air quality and its movement to the design and implementation of the comprehensive urban plan is emphasized.

“This urban system is no longer composed of separate, autonomous places with country in between but is a complete eco-system. A new urban ecology is in the making. Man is no longer able to step temporarily out of the framework of his own structuring or to move on elsewhere to escape the unforeseen consequences of his ingenuity, ruthless energy or folly”     

Zip codes and spatial analysis: Problems and prospects

The use of zip codes for spatial, demographic, and socio-economic analysis is growing. As of August 2005, 193 articles were indexed by “zip code” in the Social Sciences Citation Index, while 386 were indexed in PubMed. All of these articles were published since 1989. While the treatment of zip codes as units of analysis varies widely in epidemiology, marketing, geography, and the socio-economic planning sciences, there are a number of common “errors” that could be avoided if analysts retained a better understanding of zip code characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to outline the problems and prospects of utilizing zip codes for spatial analysis. Issues associated with spatial contiguity, data aggregation, and boundary definitions are addressed. Results suggest that, although zip codes are not the most robust spatial units of analysis available, they retain a modest degree of utility for specialized applications. Recommendations for future research regarding zip codes and their use in socio-economic applications are offered.     

A fuzzy-QFD approach to supplier selection

This article suggests a new method that transfers the house of quality (HOQ) approach typical of quality function deployment (QFD) problems to the supplier selection process. To test its efficacy, the method is applied to a supplier selection process for a medium-to-large industry that manufactures complete clutch couplings.The study starts by identifying the features that the purchased product should have (internal variables “WHAT”) in order to satisfy the company's needs, then it seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria (external variables “HOW”) in order to come up with a final ranking based on the fuzzy suitability index (FSI). The whole procedure was implemented using fuzzy numbers; the application of a fuzzy algorithm allowed the company to define by means of linguistic variables the relative importance of the “WHAT”, the “HOW”–“WHAT” correlation scores, the resulting weights of the “HOW” and the impact of each potential supplier.Special attention is paid to the various subjective assessments in the HOQ process, and symmetrical triangular fuzzy numbers are suggested to capture the vagueness in people's verbal assessments.     

Evaluating shifts in Japan's quality-of-life

This paper presents a Data Envelopment Analysis/Malmquist index (DEA/MI) analysis of the change in quality-of-life (QOL), which is defined as the state of a social system as measured by multiple social-indicators. Applying panel data from Japan's 47 prefectures for the period 1975–2002, we identify significant movement in the country's overall QOL using a “cumulative” frontier shift index. Results suggest that Japan's QOL rose during the so-called “bubble economy years” (second half of the 1980s), and then dropped in the succeeding “lost-decade” (1990s). We also identify those prefectures considered most “responsible” for the shift(s) in QOL. Moreover, the use of both upper- and lower-bound DEAs enabled an evaluation of both “good” and “bad” movements in QOL.