Design of integrated scheduling and queueing methodologies for developinables that aim at optimized people flows and maximizing safety.

This research proposal aims at developing new techniques for automated timetabling that focus on optimizing the resulting people flows and maximizing safety, i.e. minimizing the risks that are inherent to mass event crowd processes. Possible applications that could benefit from the outcome of this research are, for instance: (1) Course timetabling. In academic institutions where the class rooms are concentrated in one or a few buildings, congestion problems may occur in the halls, at the stairwells and elevators at time of course changes. These congestion problems are caused by traveling students that all have to switch rooms at the same moment. When the class rooms are spread over a city, the impact of the resulting student flows on traffic congestions can be studied. In both cases these student flows can be controlled through the course timetable. (2) Patient flows as a result of operating room schedules and appointment schedules in hospitals. The operating room schedule determines which types of patients are operated on which days, while the different patient types have different requests for services (e.g., radiography, blood tests, etc.). Thus, the operating room schedule has a clear impact on the resulting patient flows at other departments in the hospital. (3) Mass event crowd management like music festivals, cultural events, conferences, sport events, etc. The schedule of music bands or sport games has a large impact on the resulting spectator flows during and the traffic flow before and after the event. The methodology that we aim to develop in this research will combine state-of-the-art scheduling techniques like mathematical programming, metaheuristics and multicriteria approaches with queueing models and simulation in order to take into account the effect of the scheduling decisions on the resulting waiting lines, people flows and safety aspects.

Keywords:Queueing, Timetabling, Scheduling, Mathematical programming, Simulation, Metaheuristics, Safety management

Disciplines:Applied mathematics in specific fields, Statistics and numerical methods