Technical Sessions – Monday July 11

TA-19 IFORS 2011 - Melbourne
� TA-19
Tuesday, 9:00-10:30
Meeting Room 216
Attracting and Retaining Students in OR
Programs
Stream: Education and Operations Research
Invited session
Chair: Maseka Lesaoana, Statistics and Operations Research Dept.,
University of Limpopo, Private Bag X1106, Sovenga, 0727,
Polokwane, Limpopo Province, South Africa,
maseka.lesaoana@ul.ac.za
1 - OR in High Schools — New MINDSET for Teaching
Mathematics
Kenneth Chelst, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering,
Wayne State University, 4815 Fourth St., Room #2149, 48202,
Detroit, MI, United States, kchelst@wayne.edu, Thomas
Edwards
Project MINDSET has developed and implemented a full year high school
mathematics curriculum based on OR. The curriculum and textbook are being
piloted in several dozen high school classrooms. We explore how this curriculum
requires a fundamentally different mindset for teaching math in high
schools. It presents mathematics in real-world contexts to explore and discuss
the robustness of decisions. It de-emphasizes the idea of finding the single right
answer that is the core of traditional mathematics. We present a summary of
the experiences of the first 1,000 students and their teachers.
2 - Operations Research at Historically Disadvantaged Institutions
in South Africa with reference to the University
of Limpopo
Maseka Lesaoana, Statistics and Operations Research Dept.,
University of Limpopo, Private Bag X1106, Sovenga, 0727,
Polokwane, Limpopo Province, South Africa,
maseka.lesaoana@ul.ac.za
In South Africa the development of OR and its applications have remained
dominant among the "historically advantaged institutions". The aim of this paper
is to establish reasons why the "historically disadvantaged institutions" in
South Africa are invisible in the OR field. The most important recommendation
made is collaborative programmes in OR across the country and beyond that
will enable easy movement between universities.
� TA-20
Tuesday, 9:00-10:30
Meeting Room 217
Soft OR IV
Stream: Soft OR and Problem Structuring
Invited session
Chair: John Yearwood, School of InformationTechnology and
Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Univerity Drive,
Mount Helen, P.O. Box 663, 3353, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia,
j.yearwood@ballarat.edu.au
1 - The Evolution of Knowledge Representations over the
Course of an Operations Research Study
Cherylne Fleming, DSTO, 2600, Canberra, Australia,
cherylne.fleming@dsto.defence.gov.au, Lydia Byrne
An Operations Research (OR) study goes through a number of stages in its
life-time. This evolution can be likened to the development knowledge in a
scientific domain following the discovery of a new phenomenon. Such developments
have long been accomplished through the use of representations of
information and data that evolve in type and content as understanding of the
phenomena develops. This paper argues that, like scientific studies of new phenomena,
OR studies should leverage the science of knowledge representation
development to construct tailored knowledge representations that evolve as the
study progresses.
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2 - An Approach to the Decomposition of Large-scale
Stochastic Scheduling Problems
Geoff Robinson, Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics,
CSIRO, 3168, Melbourne, VIC, Australia,
Geoff.Robinson@csiro.au, Andreas Ernst, Gaurav Singh
We consider problems that arise in scheduling of various activities in the entire
coal industry of Bowen Basin. This includes scheduling of trains, stackers,
reclaimers and ships. We also assume that the duration of these activities is
stochastic. We present an approach to decomposing such problems into subproblems
based on a single computational procedure for evaluation of plans.
Options (such as the order of berthing ships at a wharf) for decision variables
can be evaluated by fleshing them out into detailed plans and then evaluating
those detailed plans.
3 - Features of Aggregation Feedback for Individuals Engaged
in Problem Solving within a Reasoning Community
John Yearwood, School of InformationTechnology and
Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Univerity Drive,
Mount Helen, P.O. Box 663, 3353, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia,
j.yearwood@ballarat.edu.au, Andrew Stranieri
Reasoning for most practical problem solving involves communicative exchanges
of assertions within participants in a community we call a reasoning
community. The feedback individuals in a reasoning community receive can
include forms of aggregation of individual views ranging from numerical preference
schemes to structured representations such as argument schemes. We
draw on reasoning communities in water management and law to illustrate that
the type of aggregation that enhances reasoning depends on features of the community
including the decision making and communication protocols adopted.
� TA-21
Tuesday, 9:00-10:30
Meeting Room 218
Airline Scheduling
Stream: Airline Applications
Invited session
Chair: Francois Soumis, GERAD, 3000 Cote Ste-Catherine, H3T
2A7, Montreal, Québec, Canada, francois.soumis@gerad.ca
1 - Introducing Competition in Airline Schedule Development
Luis Cadarso, Matemática Aplicada y Estadística, Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid, Pz. Cardenal Cisneros, 3, 28040, Madrid,
Spain, luis.cadarso@upm.es, Ángel Marín
The airline schedule design and fleet assignment problems consist of determining
departure time and fleet type for each flight. We propose an integrated
approach to design flight legs accounting for fleet assignment and market competition,
providing robust itineraries. As we are designing the timetable, we
focus on providing smooth connections to passengers so as to avoid misconnections.
The introduction of competition leads us to a mixed integer nonlinear
program. We solve it using Taylor’s series approach to the competition. An
application of the model for IBERIA’s network is shown.
2 - Using Network Optimisation to Solve a Vehicle Scheduling
Problem
Juan José Salazar González, Estadística e Investigación
Operativa, Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife), Av. Astrofísico
Francisco Sánchez, s/n, Facultad de Matemáticas, 38271, La
Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, jjsalaza@ull.es
"Binter Canarias" is a private regional air transport group with 19 aircrafts ATR
72 and more than 1000 employees flying close to 150 daily flights on average.
The airline operates in eight Canary airports and supports routes with Northern
Africa and Madeira. The operations management is critical to the business
because Binter Canarias operates very short flights of 30 minutes flight time
on average. In this paper we present, model and solve the vehicle-and-crew
schedulling problem of the airline through network optimisation techniques.