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The Financial Resource Allocation Process at Compton Community College: A Redirection.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Compton Community Coll. Federation of Teachers, CA.

This paper presents a historical portrait of the process of financial resource allocation at Compton Community College (CCC). Introductory material provides information on the college, its organization, and its budgeting and accounting procedures. Next, changes in finances occurring between 1974-75 and 1977-78 are outlined, including the growth of…

University and Polytechnic Objectives, Resource Allocation and Performance Indices in the Central Services. Program on Institutional Management in Higher Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Norris, Graeme, Ed.

Research progress by member institutions is reviewed with regard to university administration, computing, committees, libraries, and student welfare. Consideration is given to effectiveness and efficiency, management information, management by objectives, periodic review of objectives, strategy, and analytic resource allocation. Two research…

Distribution of Health Resource Allocation in the Fars Province Using the Scalogram Analysis Technique in 2011.

PubMed

Hatam, Nahid; Kafashi, Shahnaz; Kavosi, Zahra

2015-07-01

The importance of health indicators in the recent years has created challenges in resource allocation. Balanced and fair distribution of health resources is one of the main principles in achieving equity. The goal of this cross-sectional descriptive study, conducted in 2010, was to classify health structural indicators in the Fars province using the scalogram technique. Health structural indicators were selected and classified in three categories; namely institutional, human resources, and rural health. The data were obtained from the statistical yearbook of Iran and was analyzed according to the scalogram technique. The distribution map of the Fars province was drawn using ArcGIS (geographic information system). The results showed an interesting health structural indicator map across the province. Our findings revealed that the city of Mohr with 85 and Zarindasht with 36 had the highest and the lowest scores, respectively. This information is valuable to provincial health policymakers to plan appropriately based on factual data and minimize chaos in allocating health resources. Based on such data and reflecting on the local needs, one could develop equity based resource allocation policies and prevent inequality. It is concluded that, as top priority, the provincial policymakers should place dedicated deprivation programs for Farashband, Eghlid and Zaindasht regions.

Protecting resources for primary health care under fiscal federalism: options for resource allocation.

PubMed

Okorafor, Okore A; Thomas, Stephen

2007-11-01

The introduction of fiscal federalism or decentralization of functions to lower levels of government is a reform not done primarily with health sector concerns. A major concern for the health sector is that devolution of expenditure responsibilities to sub-national levels of government can adversely affect the equitable distribution of financial resources across local jurisdictions. Since the adoption of fiscal federalism in South Africa, progress towards achieving a more equitable distribution of public sector health resources (financial) has slowed down considerably. This study attempts to identify appropriate resource allocation mechanisms under the current South African fiscal federal system that could be employed to promote equity in primary health care (PHC) allocations across provinces and districts. The study uses data from interviews with government officials involved in the budgeting and resource allocation process for PHC, literature on fiscal federalism and literature on international experience to inform analysis and recommendations. The results from the study identify historical incremental budgeting, weak managerial capacity at lower levels of government, poor accounting of PHC expenditure, and lack of protection for PHC funds as constraints to the realization of a more equitable distribution of PHC allocations. Based on interview data, no one resource allocation mechanism received unanimous support from stakeholders. However, the study highlights the particularly high level of autonomy enjoyed by provincial governments with regards to decision making for allocations to health and PHC services as the major constraint to achieving a more equitable distribution of PHC resources. The national government needs to have more involvement in decision making for resource allocation to PHC services if significant progress towards equity is to be achieved.

Investigation of Education Databases in Four States To Support Policy Research on Resource Allocation. Policy Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Diane; Smith-Hansen, Lotte; Jones, Debra Hughes; Rudo, Zena H.; Alexander, Celeste; Kahlert, Rahel Kahlert, Rahel

2004-01-01

Information is one of the most important tools education decision makers need to help them effectively spend taxpayer money, allocate qualified staff, and determine the effectiveness of education investments. Decision makers must understand the role and influence of monetary and staff resources on the education system, and they must have…

Determining Optimal Allocation of Naval Obstetric Resources with Linear Programming

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-12-01

NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA MBA PROFESSIONAL REPORT DETERMINING OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF NAVAL OBSTETRIC RESOURCES...Davis Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Form Approved...OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for

Designing evaluation studies to optimally inform policy: what factors do policy-makers in China consider when making resource allocation decisions on healthcare worker training programmes?

PubMed

Wu, Shishi; Legido-Quigley, Helena; Spencer, Julia; Coker, Richard James; Khan, Mishal Sameer

2018-02-23

In light of the gap in evidence to inform future resource allocation decisions about healthcare provider (HCP) training in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the considerable donor investments being made towards training interventions, evaluation studies that are optimally designed to inform local policy-makers are needed. The aim of our study is to understand what features of HCP training evaluation studies are important for decision-making by policy-makers in LMICs. We investigate the extent to which evaluations based on the widely used Kirkpatrick model - focusing on direct outcomes of training, namely reaction of trainees, learning, behaviour change and improvements in programmatic health indicators - align with policy-makers' evidence needs for resource allocation decisions. We use China as a case study where resource allocation decisions about potential scale-up (using domestic funding) are being made about an externally funded pilot HCP training programme. Qualitative data were collected from high-level officials involved in resource allocation at the national and provincial level in China through ten face-to-face, in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions consisting of ten participants each. Data were analysed manually using an interpretive thematic analysis approach. Our study indicates that Chinese officials not only consider information about the direct outcomes of a training programme, as captured in the Kirkpatrick model, but also need information on the resources required to implement the training, the wider or indirect impacts of training, and the sustainability and scalability to other settings within the country. In addition to considering findings presented in evaluation studies, we found that Chinese policy-makers pay close attention to whether the evaluations were robust and to the composition of the evaluation team. Our qualitative study indicates that training programme evaluations that focus narrowly on direct training outcomes may not provide sufficient information for policy-makers to make decisions on future training programmes. Based on our findings, we have developed an evidence-based framework, which incorporates but expands beyond the Kirkpatrick model, to provide conceptual and practical guidance that aids in the design of training programme evaluations better suited to meet the information needs of policy-makers and to inform policy decisions.

Dividing Attention within and between Hemispheres: Testing a Multiple Resources Approach to Limited-Capacity Information Processing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friedman, Alinda; And Others

1982-01-01

Two experiments tested the limiting case of a multiple resources approach to resource allocation in information processing. Results contradict a single-capacity model, supporting the idea that the hemispheres' resource supplies are independent and have implications for both cerebral specialization and divided attention issues. (Author/PN)

Evidence to inform resource allocation for tuberculosis control in Myanmar: a systematic review based on the SYSRA framework.

PubMed

Khan, Mishal S; Schwanke Khilji, Sara U; Saw, Saw; Coker, Richard J

2017-02-01

Myanmar represents an extreme example of the difficulties in optimally allocating resources for maximum public health benefit, on the basis of limited information. At the recent Myanmar Health Forum 'Investing in Health' much of the discussion revolved around what to invest in, how health systems could be strengthened, and what research and capacity building areas the international donor community should prioritise for support. Funding for infectious disease control, particularly HIV and tuberculosis, is being channelled to the country at an unprecedented rate, but very little research has been conducted in recent years, and existing information has not yet been synthesised. This paper presents findings of the first systematic literature review on tuberculosis control and the health system in Myanmar, with the aim of informing the development of optimal research priorities and strategies. Medline and grey literature were searched for relevant papers. Inclusion criteria and analyses were structured to capture data on the Myanmar health system, healthcare delivery, financing, tuberculosis control indicators and information systems. A total of 77 papers were included in the analysis. The results indicate that there has been a large increase in the number of peer-reviewed articles published on tuberculosis in Myanmar over the past decade, although the absolute number of studies remains small. We identified several areas in which evidence to inform policy and resource allocation decisions is lacking, including research focused on rural and/or vulnerable populations, analyses of risk factors for TB and drug resistance that can inform prevention strategies and economic analyses for optimising resource allocation. The gaps in research to inform policy identified through this study may be relevant to other low resource settings with extremely limited research capacity. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The value of models in informing resource allocation in colorectal cancer screening – 1 the case of the Netherlands

PubMed Central

van Hees, Frank; Zauber, Ann G.; van Veldhuizen, Harriët; Heijnen, Marie-Louise A.; Penning, Corine; de Koning, Harry J.; van Ballegooijen, Marjolein; Lansdorp-Vogelaar, Iris

2015-01-01

In May 2011, the Dutch government decided to implement a national programme for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening using biennial faecal immunochemical test (FIT) screening between ages 55 and 75.[1] Decision modelling played an important role in informing this decision, as well as in the planning and implementation of the programme afterwards. In this overview, we illustrate the value of models in informing resource allocation in CRC screening, using the role that decision modelling has played in the Dutch CRC screening programme as an example. PMID:26063755

The values jury to aid natural resource decisions

Treesearch

Thomas C. Brown; George L. Peterson; Bruce E. Tonn

1995-01-01

Congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources. Yet, information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public, including economic measures of value, required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable. Existing sources of information about the public's...

Linking Resource Allocation to Student Achievement: A Study of Title 1 and Title 1 Stimulus Utilization

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krumpe, Kati P.

2012-01-01

With the emphasis on high standards and fiscal accountability, there is a heightened need to inform the research linking student achievement to the allocation of resources. This mixed methods inquiry sought to study how schools utilized Title 1 and Title 1 stimulus funding from 2009-2011 to determine if correlations existed between areas of…

Resource Management for Distributed Parallel Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Neuman, B. Clifford; Rao, Santosh

1993-01-01

Multiprocessor systems should exist in the the larger context of distributed systems, allowing multiprocessor resources to be shared by those that need them. Unfortunately, typical multiprocessor resource management techniques do not scale to large networks. The Prospero Resource Manager (PRM) is a scalable resource allocation system that supports the allocation of processing resources in large networks and multiprocessor systems. To manage resources in such distributed parallel systems, PRM employs three types of managers: system managers, job managers, and node managers. There exist multiple independent instances of each type of manager, reducing bottlenecks. The complexity of each manager is further reduced because each is designed to utilize information at an appropriate level of abstraction.

Medical resource preparation and allocation for humanitarian assistance based on module organization.

PubMed

Zhu, Min; Chen, Ruxue; Zhong, Shaobo; Qian, Yangming; Huang, Quanyi

2017-02-01

This research aims to associate the allocation of medical resources with the function of the modular organization and the possible needs for humanitarian assistance missions. The overseas humanitarian medical assistance mission, which was sent after a disaster on the hospital ship Peace Ark, part of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, was considered as study model. The cases used for clustering and matching sample formation were randomly selected from the existing information related to Peace Ark's mission. Categories of the reusable resources clustered by this research met the requirement of the actual consumption almost completely (more than 95%) and the categories of non-reusable resources met the requirement by more than 80%. In the mission's original resource preparing plan, more than 30% of the non-reusable resource categories remained unused during the mission. In the original resource preparing plan, some key non-reusable resources inventories were completely exhausted at the end of the mission, while 5% to 30% of non-reusable resources remained in the resource allocation plan generated by this research at the end of the mission. The medical resource allocation plan generated here can enhance the supporting level for the humanitarian assistance mission. This research could lay the foundation for an assistant decision-making system for humanitarian assistance mission.

32 CFR 1900.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... Information and Privacy Coordinator is responsible for management of the Agency-wide program defined by this..., Information Management through the Agency Release Panel shall provide policy and resource direction as... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS TO CIA RECORDS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) Additional...

32 CFR 1900.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... Information and Privacy Coordinator is responsible for management of the Agency-wide program defined by this..., Information Management through the Agency Release Panel shall provide policy and resource direction as... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS TO CIA RECORDS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) Additional...

32 CFR 1900.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... Information and Privacy Coordinator is responsible for management of the Agency-wide program defined by this..., Information Management through the Agency Release Panel shall provide policy and resource direction as... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS TO CIA RECORDS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) Additional...

School Mental Health Resources and Adolescent Mental Health Service Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Jennifer Greif; McLaughlin, Katie A.; Alegria, Margarita; Costello, E. Jane; Gruber, Michael J.; Hoagwood, Kimberly; Leaf, Philip J.; Olin, Serene; Sampson, Nancy A.; Kessler, Ronald C.

2013-01-01

Objective: Although schools are identified as critical for detecting youth mental disorders, little is known about whether the number of mental health providers and types of resources that they offer influence student mental health service use. Such information could inform the development and allocation of appropriate school-based resources to…

Temporal Uncoupling between Energy Acquisition and Allocation to Reproduction in a Herbivorous-Detritivorous Fish.

PubMed

Villamarín, Francisco; Magnusson, William E; Jardine, Timothy D; Valdez, Dominic; Woods, Ryan; Bunn, Stuart E

2016-01-01

Although considerable knowledge has been gathered regarding the role of fish in cycling and translocation of nutrients across ecosystem boundaries, little information is available on how the energy obtained from different ecosystems is temporally allocated in fish bodies. Although in theory, limitations on energy budgets promote the existence of a trade-off between energy allocated to reproduction and somatic growth, this trade-off has rarely been found under natural conditions. Combining information on RNA:DNA ratios and carbon and nitrogen stable-isotope analyses we were able to achieve novel insights into the reproductive allocation of diamond mullet (Liza alata), a catadromous, widely distributed herbivorous-detritivorous fish. Although diamond mullet were in better condition during the wet season, most reproductive allocation occurred during the dry season when resources are limited and fish have poorer body condition. We found a strong trade-off between reproductive and somatic investment. Values of δ13C from reproductive and somatic tissues were correlated, probably because δ13C in food resources between dry and wet seasons do not differ markedly. On the other hand, data for δ15N showed that gonads are more correlated to muscle, a slow turnover tissue, suggesting long term synthesis of reproductive tissues. In combination, these lines of evidence suggest that L. alata is a capital breeder which shows temporal uncoupling of resource ingestion, energy storage and later allocation to reproduction.

Temporal Uncoupling between Energy Acquisition and Allocation to Reproduction in a Herbivorous-Detritivorous Fish

PubMed Central

Villamarín, Francisco; Magnusson, William E.; Jardine, Timothy D.; Valdez, Dominic; Woods, Ryan; Bunn, Stuart E.

2016-01-01

Although considerable knowledge has been gathered regarding the role of fish in cycling and translocation of nutrients across ecosystem boundaries, little information is available on how the energy obtained from different ecosystems is temporally allocated in fish bodies. Although in theory, limitations on energy budgets promote the existence of a trade-off between energy allocated to reproduction and somatic growth, this trade-off has rarely been found under natural conditions. Combining information on RNA:DNA ratios and carbon and nitrogen stable-isotope analyses we were able to achieve novel insights into the reproductive allocation of diamond mullet (Liza alata), a catadromous, widely distributed herbivorous-detritivorous fish. Although diamond mullet were in better condition during the wet season, most reproductive allocation occurred during the dry season when resources are limited and fish have poorer body condition. We found a strong trade-off between reproductive and somatic investment. Values of δ13C from reproductive and somatic tissues were correlated, probably because δ13C in food resources between dry and wet seasons do not differ markedly. On the other hand, data for δ15N showed that gonads are more correlated to muscle, a slow turnover tissue, suggesting long term synthesis of reproductive tissues. In combination, these lines of evidence suggest that L. alata is a capital breeder which shows temporal uncoupling of resource ingestion, energy storage and later allocation to reproduction. PMID:26938216

COOPERATIVE ROUTING FOR DYNAMIC AERIAL LAYER NETWORKS

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-03-01

Advisor, Computing & Communications Division Information Directorate This report is published in the interest of scientific and technical...information accumulation at the physical layer, and study the cooperative routing and resource allocation problems associated with such SU networks...interference power constraint is studied . In [Shi2012Joint], an optimal power and sub-carrier allocation strategy to maximize SUs’ throughput subject to

Learning automata-based solutions to the nonlinear fractional knapsack problem with applications to optimal resource allocation.

PubMed

Granmo, Ole-Christoffer; Oommen, B John; Myrer, Svein Arild; Olsen, Morten Goodwin

2007-02-01

This paper considers the nonlinear fractional knapsack problem and demonstrates how its solution can be effectively applied to two resource allocation problems dealing with the World Wide Web. The novel solution involves a "team" of deterministic learning automata (LA). The first real-life problem relates to resource allocation in web monitoring so as to "optimize" information discovery when the polling capacity is constrained. The disadvantages of the currently reported solutions are explained in this paper. The second problem concerns allocating limited sampling resources in a "real-time" manner with the purpose of estimating multiple binomial proportions. This is the scenario encountered when the user has to evaluate multiple web sites by accessing a limited number of web pages, and the proportions of interest are the fraction of each web site that is successfully validated by an HTML validator. Using the general LA paradigm to tackle both of the real-life problems, the proposed scheme improves a current solution in an online manner through a series of informed guesses that move toward the optimal solution. At the heart of the scheme, a team of deterministic LA performs a controlled random walk on a discretized solution space. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that the discretization resolution determines the precision of the scheme, and that for a given precision, the current solution (to both problems) is consistently improved until a nearly optimal solution is found--even for switching environments. Thus, the scheme, while being novel to the entire field of LA, also efficiently handles a class of resource allocation problems previously not addressed in the literature.

State Literacy Resource Centers Program Grant Information.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Office of Vocational and Adult Education (ED), Washington, DC. Clearinghouse on Adult Education and Literacy.

This document provides information on the State Literacy Resource Centers established by the National Literacy Act. The information provided for each state in a chart format includes type of action being taken under the grant, operator and location, allocation (in dollars), and contact person with address and telephone number. The 50 states are…

Sustainability in health care by allocating resources effectively (SHARE) 4: exploring opportunities and methods for consumer engagement in resource allocation in a local healthcare setting.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Ko, Henry; Waller, Cara; Sloss, Pamela; Williams, Pamela

2017-05-05

This is the fourth in a series of papers reporting a program of Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. Healthcare decision-makers have sought to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services through removal or restriction of practices that are unsafe or of little benefit, often referred to as 'disinvestment'. A systematic, integrated, evidence-based program for disinvestment was being established within a large Australian health service network. Consumer engagement was acknowledged as integral to this process. This paper reports the process of developing a model to integrate consumer views and preferences into an organisation-wide approach to resource allocation. A literature search was conducted and interviews and workshops were undertaken with health service consumers and staff. Findings were drafted into a model for consumer engagement in resource allocation which was workshopped and refined. Although consumer engagement is increasingly becoming a requirement of publicly-funded health services and documented in standards and policies, participation in organisational decision-making is not widespread. Several consistent messages for consumer engagement in this context emerged from the literature and consumer responses. Opportunities, settings and activities for consumer engagement through communication, consultation and participation were identified within the resource allocation process. Sources of information regarding consumer values and perspectives in publications and locally-collected data, and methods to use them in health service decision-making, were identified. A model bringing these elements together was developed. The proposed model presents potential opportunities and activities for consumer engagement in the context of resource allocation.

[Allocation of attentional resource and monitoring processes under rapid serial visual presentation].

PubMed

Nishiura, K

1998-08-01

With the use of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the present study investigated the cause of target intrusion errors and functioning of monitoring processes. Eighteen students participated in Experiment 1, and 24 in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, different target intrusion errors were found depending on different kinds of letters --romaji, hiragana, and kanji. In Experiment 2, stimulus set size and context information were manipulated in an attempt to explore the cause of post-target intrusion errors. Results showed that as stimulus set size increased, the post-target intrusion errors also increased, but contextual information did not affect the errors. Results concerning mean report probability indicated that increased allocation of attentional resource to response-defining dimension was the cause of the errors. In addition, results concerning confidence rating showed that monitoring of temporal and contextual information was extremely accurate, but it was not so for stimulus information. These results suggest that attentional resource is different from monitoring resource.

Adult age differences in the storage of information in working memory.

PubMed

Foos, P W; Wright, L

1992-01-01

The performance of 97 young and 91 old persons were compared to determine if a deficiency in working memory resources for processing, storage, or allocation could be detected. Persons simultaneously performed a storage and one of two processing tasks while instructed to allocate resources to processing, storage, or both tasks. The storage task involved remembering the names of one, three, or five persons. Processing tasks involved solving addition problems presented on flashcards or answering common knowledge questions. Results showed increased age differences on the storage task as demands for resources increased but no differences on processing tasks. Individuals seemed unable to allocate resources as instructed. A comparison of young-old and old-old groups showed the same results as those obtained comparing young and old groups and support the hypothesis of a deficiency of storage, but not processing, resources in working memory for old, especially old-old, adults.

[Mechanisms for allocating financial resources after decentralization in the state of Jalisco].

PubMed

Pérez-Núñez, Ricardo; Arredondo-López, Armando; Pelcastre, Blanca

2006-01-01

To analyze, from the decision maker's perspective, the financial resource allocation process of the health services of the state of Jalisco (SSJ, per its abbreviation in spanish), within the context of decentralization. Through a qualitative approximation using semi-structured individual interviews of key personnel in managerial positions as the method for compiling information, the experience of the SSJ in financial resource allocation was documented. From September to November 2003, the perception of managers and administrators regarding their level of autonomy in decision-making was explored as well as the process they follow for the allocation of financial resources, in order to identify the criteria they use and their justifications. From the point of view of decision-makers, autonomy of the SSJ has increased considerably since decentralization was implemented, although the degree of decision-making freedom remains limited due mainly to high adminstrative costs associated with salaries. In this sense, the implications attributable to labor situations that are still centralized are evident. Some innovative systems for financial resource allocation have been established in the SSJ for the sanitary regions and hospitals based upon administrative-managerial and productivity incentives. Adjustments were also made for degree of marginalization and population lag, under the equity criterion. General work conditions and decision-making autonomy of the sanitary regions constitute outstanding aspects pending decentralization. Although decentralization has granted more autonomy to the SSJ, the level of decision-making freedom for allocating financial resources has been held within the highest hierarchical levels.

Visitor and recreation impact monitoring: Is it lost in the gulf between science and management?

Treesearch

David N. Cole

2006-01-01

Park managers have seldom had the scientific information on recreation and its impacts that they need. Despite allocating substantial portions of park budgets to visitor management, few resources are typically allocated to recreation science. This is hugely problematic. Visitors are a focal species in every park and yet we have little systematic information about how...

The evolution of PBMA: towards a macro-level priority setting framework for health regions.

PubMed

Mitton, Craig R; Donaldson, Cam; Waldner, Howard; Eagle, Chris

2003-11-01

To date, relatively little work on priority setting has been carried out at a macro-level across major portfolios within integrated health care organizations. This paper describes a macro marginal analysis (MMA) process for setting priorities and allocating resources in health authorities, based on work carried out in a major urban health region in Alberta, Canada. MMA centers around an expert working group of managers and clinicians who are charged with identifying areas for resource re-allocation on an ongoing basis. Trade-offs between services are based on locally defined criteria and are informed by multiple inputs such as evidence from the literature and local expert opinion. The approach is put forth as a significant improvement on historical resource allocation patterns.

Titrating versus targeting home care services to frail elderly clients: an application of agency theory and cost-benefit analysis to home care policy.

PubMed

Weissert, William; Chernew, Michael; Hirth, Richard

2003-02-01

The article summarizes the shortcomings of current home care targeting policy, provides a conceptual framework for understanding the sources of its problems, and proposes an alternative resource allocation method. Methods required for different aspects of the study included synthesis of the published literature, regression analysis of risk predictors, and comparison of actual resource allocations with simulated budgets. Problems of imperfect agency ranging from unclear goals and inappropriate incentives to lack of information about the marginal effectiveness of home care could be mitigated with an improved budgeting method that combines client selection and resource allocation. No program can produce its best outcome performance when its goals are unclear and its technology is unstandardized. Titration of care would reallocate resources to maximize marginal benefit for marginal cost.

Mental workload prediction based on attentional resource allocation and information processing.

PubMed

Xiao, Xu; Wanyan, Xiaoru; Zhuang, Damin

2015-01-01

Mental workload is an important component in complex human-machine systems. The limited applicability of empirical workload measures produces the need for workload modeling and prediction methods. In the present study, a mental workload prediction model is built on the basis of attentional resource allocation and information processing to ensure pilots' accuracy and speed in understanding large amounts of flight information on the cockpit display interface. Validation with an empirical study of an abnormal attitude recovery task showed that this model's prediction of mental workload highly correlated with experimental results. This mental workload prediction model provides a new tool for optimizing human factors interface design and reducing human errors.

Technical Standards for Command and Control Information Systems (CCISs)

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-01-01

initiation, Conformance Testing 149 management, scheduling, resource allocation , logical and IEEE P1 003 146 physical device access, interrupt handling...70 5.2.3 Remote Data Access (RDA) ........................................... 72 5.2.4 Information Resource Dictionary...146 7.2.1.2 POSIX Conformance Testing .............................. 149 7.2.2 Consortia Recommendations

7 CFR 1466.5 - National allocation and management.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... adjustments to national priorities and information about resource concerns and program performance. The data used in the allocation formula will be updated as they become available. (b) Provide a performance...) Establish State level EQIP performance goals based on national, regional, and State priorities. (d) Ensure...

Is Attentional Resource Allocation Across Sensory Modalities Task-Dependent?

PubMed

Wahn, Basil; König, Peter

2017-01-01

Human information processing is limited by attentional resources. That is, via attentional mechanisms, humans select a limited amount of sensory input to process while other sensory input is neglected. In multisensory research, a matter of ongoing debate is whether there are distinct pools of attentional resources for each sensory modality or whether attentional resources are shared across sensory modalities. Recent studies have suggested that attentional resource allocation across sensory modalities is in part task-dependent. That is, the recruitment of attentional resources across the sensory modalities depends on whether processing involves object-based attention (e.g., the discrimination of stimulus attributes) or spatial attention (e.g., the localization of stimuli). In the present paper, we review findings in multisensory research related to this view. For the visual and auditory sensory modalities, findings suggest that distinct resources are recruited when humans perform object-based attention tasks, whereas for the visual and tactile sensory modalities, partially shared resources are recruited. If object-based attention tasks are time-critical, shared resources are recruited across the sensory modalities. When humans perform an object-based attention task in combination with a spatial attention task, partly shared resources are recruited across the sensory modalities as well. Conversely, for spatial attention tasks, attentional processing does consistently involve shared attentional resources for the sensory modalities. Generally, findings suggest that the attentional system flexibly allocates attentional resources depending on task demands. We propose that such flexibility reflects a large-scale optimization strategy that minimizes the brain's costly resource expenditures and simultaneously maximizes capability to process currently relevant information.

Constraints and potential for efficient inter-sectoral water allocations in Tanzania

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kashaigili, Japhet J.; Kadigi, Reuben M. J.; Sokile, Charles S.; Mahoo, Henry F.

In many sub-Saharan African countries, there are conflicts over water uses in most river basins. In Tanzania, conflicts are becoming alarming and are exacerbated by increasing water demands due to rapid population growth and expanding economic activities. This paper reviews the major constraints and potential for achieving efficient systems of allocating water resources to different uses and users in Tanzania. The following constraints are identified: (a) the lack of active community involvement in management of water resources, (b) conflicting institutions and weak institutional capacities both in terms of regulations and protection of interests of the poor, (c) the lack of data and information to inform policy and strategies for balanced water allocation, and (d) inadequate funds for operation, maintenance and expansion of water supply systems. Despite these constraints, there are also opportunities for improving water allocation and management systems in the country. These include: the available reserve of both surface and groundwater resources, which remain unexploited; high demand for water services; a high potential for investing in the water sector; and availability of basic infrastructure and elements of institutional framework that can be improved. The paper recommends the use of combined variants of water allocation devices which (a) meet different water requirements and ensure desirable multiple-use outcomes, (b) facilitate the classification of water resources in terms of desired environmental protection levels, (c) allow reforms in water utilization to achieve equity and meet changing social and economic priorities, (d) facilitate the development of effective local institutions, (e) put in place the legal system that assigns rights to water resources and describes how those rights may be transferred, (f) enforce the rights and punish infringements on those rights, and (g) use cost-effective pricing systems to ensure that payment for water uses cover development, operational and management costs.

Sustainability in health care by allocating resources effectively (SHARE) 3: examining how resource allocation decisions are made, implemented and evaluated in a local healthcare setting.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Allen, Kelly; Waller, Cara; Brooke, Vanessa

2017-05-09

This is the third in a series of papers reporting a program of Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. Leaders in a large Australian health service planned to establish an organisation-wide, systematic, integrated, evidence-based approach to disinvestment. In order to introduce new systems and processes for disinvestment into existing decision-making infrastructure, we aimed to understand where, how and by whom resource allocation decisions were made, implemented and evaluated. We also sought the knowledge and experience of staff regarding previous disinvestment activities. Structured interviews, workshops and document analysis were used to collect information from multiple sources in an environmental scan of decision-making systems and processes. Findings were synthesised using a theoretical framework. Sixty-eight respondents participated in interviews and workshops. Eight components in the process of resource allocation were identified: Governance, Administration, Stakeholder engagement, Resources, Decision-making, Implementation, Evaluation and, where appropriate, Reinvestment of savings. Elements of structure and practice for each component are described and a new framework was developed to capture the relationships between them. A range of decision-makers, decision-making settings, type and scope of decisions, criteria used, and strengths, weaknesses, barriers and enablers are outlined. The term 'disinvestment' was not used in health service decision-making. Previous projects that involved removal, reduction or restriction of current practices were driven by quality and safety issues, evidence-based practice or a need to find resource savings and not by initiatives where the primary aim was to disinvest. Measuring resource savings is difficult, in some situations impossible. Savings are often only theoretical as resources released may be utilised immediately by patients waiting for beds, clinic appointments or surgery. Decision-making systems and processes for resource allocation are more complex than assumed in previous studies. There is a wide range of decision-makers, settings, scope and type of decisions, and criteria used for allocating resources within a single institution. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to report this level of detail and to introduce eight components of the resource allocation process identified within a local health service.

An information system to improve financial management, resource allocation and activity planning: evaluation results.

PubMed

Ruland, C M; Ravn, I H

2001-01-01

An important strategy for improving resource management and cost containment in health care is to develop information systems that assist hospital managers in financial management, resource allocation, and activity planning. A crucial part of such development is a rigorous evaluation to assess whether the system accomplishes it's intended goals. To evaluate CLASSICA, a Decision Support System (DSS), that assists nurse managers in financial management, resource allocation, staffing, and activity planning. Using a pre-post test design with control units, CLASSICA was evaluated in four test units. Baseline data and simultaneous parallel measures were collected prior to system implementation at test sites and control units. Using expense reports, staffing and financial statistics, surveys, interviews with nurse managers, and logs as data sources, CLASSICA was evaluated on: cost reduction, quality of management information; usefulness as decision support for improved financial management and decision-making; user satisfaction; and ease of use. Evaluation results showed a 41% reduction in expenditures for overtime and extra hours as compared to a 1.8% reduction in control units during the same time period. Users reported a significant improvement in management information; nurse managers stated that they had gained control over costs. The system helped them analyze the relationships between patient activity staffing, and cost of care. Users reported high satisfaction with the system, the information and decision support it provided, and its ease of use. These results suggest that CLASSICA is a DSS that successfully assists nurse managers in cost effective management of their units.

Building an Information Infrastructure.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breivik, Patricia Senn

1992-01-01

College governing boards can promote good campus information management by understanding available services, monitoring changes and their relationship to priorities, supporting policies enhancing access to information, encouraging resource allocation for networking, promoting regional economic development through information use, and supporting…

Holding-time-aware asymmetric spectrum allocation in virtual optical networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lyu, Chunjian; Li, Hui; Liu, Yuze; Ji, Yuefeng

2017-10-01

Virtual optical networks (VONs) have been considered as a promising solution to support current high-capacity dynamic traffic and achieve rapid applications deployment. Since most of the network services (e.g., high-definition video service, cloud computing, distributed storage) in VONs are provisioned by dedicated data centers, needing different amount of bandwidth resources in both directions, the network traffic is mostly asymmetric. The common strategy, symmetric provisioning of traffic in optical networks, leads to a waste of spectrum resources in such traffic patterns. In this paper, we design a holding-time-aware asymmetric spectrum allocation module based on SDON architecture and an asymmetric spectrum allocation algorithm based on the module is proposed. For the purpose of reducing spectrum resources' waste, the algorithm attempts to reallocate the idle unidirectional spectrum slots in VONs, which are generated due to the asymmetry of services' bidirectional bandwidth. This part of resources can be exploited by other requests, such as short-time non-VON requests. We also introduce a two-dimensional asymmetric resource model for maintaining idle spectrum resources information of VON in spectrum and time domains. Moreover, a simulation is designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, and results show that our proposed asymmetric spectrum allocation algorithm can improve the resource waste and reduce blocking probability.

77 FR 45331 - White Pine-Nye Resource Advisory Committee

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-31

... INFORMATION CONTACT. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The following business will be conducted: Review and approve previous meeting's minutes and business expenses, Recommend funding allocation for proposed projects, and...

76 FR 25298 - White Pine-Nye County Resource Advisory Committee

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-05-04

... person listed FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The following business will be conducted: Review and approve previous meeting's minutes and business expenses, Recommend funding allocation...

A Decision Support System For The Real-Time Allocation Of The Water Resource Of The Tarim River Basin, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, J.; Wang, G.; Liu, R.

2008-12-01

The Tarim River Basin is the longest inland river in China. Due to water scarcity, ecologically-fragile is becoming a significant constraint to sustainable development in this region. To effectively manage the limited water resources for ecological purposes and for conventional water utilization purposes, a real-time water resources allocation Decision Support System (DSS) has been developed. Based on workflows of the water resources regulations and comprehensive analysis of the efficiency and feasibility of water management strategies, the DSS includes information systems that perform data acquisition, management and visualization, and model systems that perform hydrological forecast, water demand prediction, flow routing simulation and water resources optimization of the hydrological and water utilization process. An optimization and process control strategy is employed to dynamically allocate the water resources among the different stakeholders. The competitive targets and constraints are taken into considered by multi-objective optimization and with different priorities. The DSS of the Tarim River Basin has been developed and been successfully utilized to support the water resources management of the Tarim River Basin since 2005.

Dynamic resource allocation in a hierarchical multiprocessor system: A preliminary study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ngai, Tin-Fook

1986-01-01

An integrated system approach to dynamic resource allocation is proposed. Some of the problems in dynamic resource allocation and the relationship of these problems to system structures are examined. A general dynamic resource allocation scheme is presented. A hierarchial system architecture which dynamically maps between processor structure and programs at multiple levels of instantiations is described. Simulation experiments were conducted to study dynamic resource allocation on the proposed system. Preliminary evaluation based on simple dynamic resource allocation algorithms indicates that with the proposed system approach, the complexity of dynamic resource management could be significantly reduced while achieving reasonable effective dynamic resource allocation.

Grid accounting service: state and future development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Levshina, T.; Sehgal, C.; Bockelman, B.; Weitzel, D.; Guru, A.

2014-06-01

During the last decade, large-scale federated distributed infrastructures have been continually developed and expanded. One of the crucial components of a cyber-infrastructure is an accounting service that collects data related to resource utilization and identity of users using resources. The accounting service is important for verifying pledged resource allocation per particular groups and users, providing reports for funding agencies and resource providers, and understanding hardware provisioning requirements. It can also be used for end-to-end troubleshooting as well as billing purposes. In this work we describe Gratia, a federated accounting service jointly developed at Fermilab and Holland Computing Center at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The Open Science Grid, Fermilab, HCC, and several other institutions have used Gratia in production for several years. The current development activities include expanding Virtual Machines provisioning information, XSEDE allocation usage accounting, and Campus Grids resource utilization. We also identify the direction of future work: improvement and expansion of Cloud accounting, persistent and elastic storage space allocation, and the incorporation of WAN and LAN network metrics.

Team Collaboration Software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wang, Yeou-Fang; Schrock, Mitchell; Baldwin, John R.; Borden, Charles S.

2010-01-01

The Ground Resource Allocation and Planning Environment (GRAPE 1.0) is a Web-based, collaborative team environment based on the Microsoft SharePoint platform, which provides Deep Space Network (DSN) resource planners tools and services for sharing information and performing analysis.

PS-CARA: Context-Aware Resource Allocation Scheme for Mobile Public Safety Networks.

PubMed

Kaleem, Zeeshan; Khaliq, Muhammad Zubair; Khan, Ajmal; Ahmad, Ishtiaq; Duong, Trung Q

2018-05-08

The fifth-generation (5G) communications systems are expecting to support users with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Beside these requirements, the task with utmost importance is to support the emergency communication services during natural or man-made disasters. Most of the conventional base stations are not properly functional during a disaster situation, so deployment of emergency base stations such as mobile personal cell (mPC) is crucial. An mPC having moving capability can move in the disaster area to provide emergency communication services. However, mPC deployment causes severe co-channel interference to the users in its vicinity. The problem in the existing resource allocation schemes is its support for static environment, that does not fit well for mPC. So, a resource allocation scheme for mPC users is desired that can dynamically allocate resources based on users’ location and its connection establishment priority. In this paper, we propose a public safety users priority-based context-aware resource allocation (PS-CARA) scheme for users sum-rate maximization in disaster environment. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed PS-CARA scheme can increase the user average and edge rate around 10.3% and 32.8% , respectively because of context information availability and by prioritizing the public safety users. The simulation results ensure that call blocking probability is also reduced considerably under the PS-CARA scheme.

PS-CARA: Context-Aware Resource Allocation Scheme for Mobile Public Safety Networks

PubMed Central

Khaliq, Muhammad Zubair; Khan, Ajmal; Ahmad, Ishtiaq

2018-01-01

The fifth-generation (5G) communications systems are expecting to support users with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Beside these requirements, the task with utmost importance is to support the emergency communication services during natural or man-made disasters. Most of the conventional base stations are not properly functional during a disaster situation, so deployment of emergency base stations such as mobile personal cell (mPC) is crucial. An mPC having moving capability can move in the disaster area to provide emergency communication services. However, mPC deployment causes severe co-channel interference to the users in its vicinity. The problem in the existing resource allocation schemes is its support for static environment, that does not fit well for mPC. So, a resource allocation scheme for mPC users is desired that can dynamically allocate resources based on users’ location and its connection establishment priority. In this paper, we propose a public safety users priority-based context-aware resource allocation (PS-CARA) scheme for users sum-rate maximization in disaster environment. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed PS-CARA scheme can increase the user average and edge rate around 10.3% and 32.8% , respectively because of context information availability and by prioritizing the public safety users. The simulation results ensure that call blocking probability is also reduced considerably under the PS-CARA scheme. PMID:29738499

Biomass Resource Allocation among Competing End Uses

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Newes, E.; Bush, B.; Inman, D.

The Biomass Scenario Model (BSM) is a system dynamics model developed by the U.S. Department of Energy as a tool to better understand the interaction of complex policies and their potential effects on the biofuels industry in the United States. However, it does not currently have the capability to account for allocation of biomass resources among the various end uses, which limits its utilization in analysis of policies that target biomass uses outside the biofuels industry. This report provides a more holistic understanding of the dynamics surrounding the allocation of biomass among uses that include traditional use, wood pellet exports,more » bio-based products and bioproducts, biopower, and biofuels by (1) highlighting the methods used in existing models' treatments of competition for biomass resources; (2) identifying coverage and gaps in industry data regarding the competing end uses; and (3) exploring options for developing models of biomass allocation that could be integrated with the BSM to actively exchange and incorporate relevant information.« less

Controlling collective dynamics in complex minority-game resource-allocation systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Ji-Qiang; Huang, Zi-Gang; Dong, Jia-Qi; Huang, Liang; Lai, Ying-Cheng

2013-05-01

Resource allocation takes place in various kinds of real-world complex systems, such as traffic systems, social services institutions or organizations, or even ecosystems. The fundamental principle underlying complex resource-allocation dynamics is Boolean interactions associated with minority games, as resources are generally limited and agents tend to choose the least used resource based on available information. A common but harmful dynamical behavior in resource-allocation systems is herding, where there are time intervals during which a large majority of the agents compete for a few resources, leaving many other resources unused. Accompanying the herd behavior is thus strong fluctuations with time in the number of resources being used. In this paper, we articulate and establish that an intuitive control strategy, namely pinning control, is effective at harnessing the herding dynamics. In particular, by fixing the choices of resources for a few agents while leaving the majority of the agents free, herding can be eliminated completely. Our investigation is systematic in that we consider random and targeted pinning and a variety of network topologies, and we carry out a comprehensive analysis in the framework of mean-field theory to understand the working of control. The basic philosophy is then that, when a few agents waive their freedom to choose resources by receiving sufficient incentives, the majority of the agents benefit in that they will make fair, efficient, and effective use of the available resources. Our work represents a basic and general framework to address the fundamental issue of fluctuations in complex dynamical systems with significant applications to social, economical, and political systems.

A market-based optimization approach to sensor and resource management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schrage, Dan; Farnham, Christopher; Gonsalves, Paul G.

2006-05-01

Dynamic resource allocation for sensor management is a problem that demands solutions beyond traditional approaches to optimization. Market-based optimization applies solutions from economic theory, particularly game theory, to the resource allocation problem by creating an artificial market for sensor information and computational resources. Intelligent agents are the buyers and sellers in this market, and they represent all the elements of the sensor network, from sensors to sensor platforms to computational resources. These agents interact based on a negotiation mechanism that determines their bidding strategies. This negotiation mechanism and the agents' bidding strategies are based on game theory, and they are designed so that the aggregate result of the multi-agent negotiation process is a market in competitive equilibrium, which guarantees an optimal allocation of resources throughout the sensor network. This paper makes two contributions to the field of market-based optimization: First, we develop a market protocol to handle heterogeneous goods in a dynamic setting. Second, we develop arbitrage agents to improve the efficiency in the market in light of its dynamic nature.

Resource allocation in health care and the role of personal autonomy.

PubMed

Gandjour, A

2015-03-01

Resource allocation decisions in health care require the consideration of ethical values. Major ethical theories include Amartya Sen's capability approach, Norman Daniels's theory of justice for health, and preference utilitarian theory. This paper argues that while only preference utilitarian theory explicitly considers the impact of an individual's actions on others, all 3 theories agree in terms of providing individual autonomy. Furthermore, it shows that all 3 theories emphasise the role of informed preferences in securing individual autonomy. Still, stressing personal autonomy has limited direct implications for priority setting. 2 priority rules for resource allocation could be identified: 1) to give priority to patients with mental disability (over those with pure physical disability); and 2) to give priority to patients with a large expected loss of autonomy without treatment. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Information quality-control model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vincent, D. A.

1971-01-01

Model serves as graphic tool for estimating complete product objectives from limited input information, and is applied to cost estimations, product-quality evaluations, and effectiveness measurements for manpower resources allocation. Six product quality levels are defined.

Efficient Resources Provisioning Based on Load Forecasting in Cloud

PubMed Central

Hu, Rongdong; Jiang, Jingfei; Liu, Guangming; Wang, Lixin

2014-01-01

Cloud providers should ensure QoS while maximizing resources utilization. One optimal strategy is to timely allocate resources in a fine-grained mode according to application's actual resources demand. The necessary precondition of this strategy is obtaining future load information in advance. We propose a multi-step-ahead load forecasting method, KSwSVR, based on statistical learning theory which is suitable for the complex and dynamic characteristics of the cloud computing environment. It integrates an improved support vector regression algorithm and Kalman smoother. Public trace data taken from multitypes of resources were used to verify its prediction accuracy, stability, and adaptability, comparing with AR, BPNN, and standard SVR. Subsequently, based on the predicted results, a simple and efficient strategy is proposed for resource provisioning. CPU allocation experiment indicated it can effectively reduce resources consumption while meeting service level agreements requirements. PMID:24701160

What Factors Do Allied Health Take Into Account When Making Resource Allocation Decisions?

PubMed Central

Lane, Haylee; Sturgess, Tamica; Philip, Kathleen; Markham, Donna; Martin, Jennifer; Walsh, Jill; Hubbard, Wendy; Haines, Terry

2018-01-01

Background: Allied health comprises multiple professional groups including dietetics, medical radiation practitioners, occupational therapists, optometrists and psychologists. Different to medical and nursing, Allied health are often organized in discipline specific departments and allocate budgets within these to provide services to a range of clinical areas. Little is known of how managers of allied health go about allocating these resources, the factors they consider when making these decisions, and the sources of information they rely upon. The purpose of this study was to identify the key factors that allied health consider when making resource allocation decisions and the sources of information they are based upon. Methods: Four forums were conducted each consisting of case studies, a large group discussion and two hypothetical scenarios to elicit data. A thematic content analysis commenced during post-forum discussions of key factors by forum facilitators. These factors were then presented to an expert working party for further discussion and refinement. Transcripts were generated of all data recordings and a detailed thematic analysis was undertaken by one author to ensure coded data matched the initial thematic analysis. Results: Twelve factors affecting the decision-making of allied health managers and clinicians were identified. One of these factors was disendorsed by the expert working party. The 11 remaining factors can be considered to be key decision-making principles that should be consistently applied to resource allocation. These principles were clustered into three overarching themes of readiness, impact and appropriateness. Conclusion: Understanding these principles now means further research can be completed to more effectively integrate research evidence into health policy and service delivery, create partnerships among policy-makers, managers, service providers and researchers, and to provide support to answer difficult questions that policy-makers, managers and service providers face. PMID:29764105

30 CFR 1220.003 - Information collection.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Information collection. 1220.003 Section 1220... CONTINENTAL SHELF OIL AND GAS LEASES § 1220.003 Information collection. (a) The information collection... Number 1010-0073. The information will be used to determine all allowable direct and allocable joint...

Multicriterion problem of allocation of resources in the heterogeneous distributed information processing systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Antamoshkin, O. A.; Kilochitskaya, T. R.; Ontuzheva, G. A.; Stupina, A. A.; Tynchenko, V. S.

2018-05-01

This study reviews the problem of allocation of resources in the heterogeneous distributed information processing systems, which may be formalized in the form of a multicriterion multi-index problem with the linear constraints of the transport type. The algorithms for solution of this problem suggest a search for the entire set of Pareto-optimal solutions. For some classes of hierarchical systems, it is possible to significantly speed up the procedure of verification of a system of linear algebraic inequalities for consistency due to the reducibility of them to the stream models or the application of other solution schemes (for strongly connected structures) that take into account the specifics of the hierarchies under consideration.

Strategic Planning and Information Systems.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shuman, Jack N.

1982-01-01

Discusses the functions of business planning systems and analyzes the underlying assumptions of the information systems that support strategic planning efforts within organizations. Development of a system framework, obstacles to the successful creation of strategic planning information systems, and resource allocation in organizations are…

Factors influencing resource allocation decisions and equity in the health system of Ghana.

PubMed

Asante, A D; Zwi, A B

2009-05-01

Allocation of financial resources in the health sector is often seen as a formula-driven activity. However, the decision to allocate a certain amount of resources to a particular health jurisdiction or facility may be based on a broader range of factors, sometimes not reflected in the existing resource allocation formula. This study explores the 'other' factors that influence the equity of resource allocation in the health system of Ghana. The extent to which these factors are, or can be, accounted for in the resource allocation process is analysed. An exploratory design focusing on different levels of the health system and diverse stakeholders. Data were gathered through semi-structured qualitative interviews with health authorities at national, regional and district levels, and with donor representatives and local government officials in 2003 and 2004. The availability of human resources for health, local capacity to utilize funds, donor involvement in the health sector, and commitment to promote equity have considerable influence on resource allocation decisions and affect the equity of funding allocations. However, these factors are not accounted for adequately in the resource allocation process. This study highlights the need for a more transparent resource allocation system in Ghana based on needs, and takes into account key issues such as capacity constraints, the inequitable human resource distribution and donor-earmarked funding.

Resource allocation on the frontlines of public health preparedness and response: report of a summit on legal and ethical issues.

PubMed

Barnett, Daniel J; Taylor, Holly A; Hodge, James G; Links, Jonathan M

2009-01-01

In the face of all-hazards preparedness challenges, local and state health department personnel have to date lacked a discrete set of legally and ethically informed public health principles to guide the distribution of scarce resources in crisis settings. To help address this gap, we convened a Summit of academic and practice experts to develop a set of principles for legally and ethically sound public health resource triage decision-making in emergencies. The invitation-only Summit, held in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 2006, assembled 20 experts from a combination of academic institutions and nonacademic leadership, policy, and practice settings. The Summit featured a tabletop exercise designed to highlight resource scarcity challenges in a public health infectious disease emergency. This exercise served as a springboard for Summit participants' subsequent identification of 10 public health emergency resource allocation principles through an iterative process. The final product of the Summit was a set of 10 principles to guide allocation decisions involving scarce resources in public health emergencies. The principles are grouped into three categories: obligations to community; balancing personal autonomy and community well-being/benefit; and good preparedness practice. The 10 Summit-derived principles represent an attempt to link law, ethics, and real-world public health emergency resource allocation practices, and can serve as a useful starting framework to guide further systematic approaches and future research on addressing public health resource scarcity in an all-hazards context.

32 CFR 1900.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS TO CIA RECORDS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) Additional... Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information review and release demands imposed by the Congress or...

32 CFR 1900.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS TO CIA RECORDS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) Additional... Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information review and release demands imposed by the Congress or...

Neural circuitry governing anxious individuals' mis-allocation of working memory to threat.

PubMed

Stout, Daniel M; Shackman, Alexander J; Pedersen, Walker S; Miskovich, Tara A; Larson, Christine L

2017-08-18

Dispositional anxiety is a trait-like phenotype that confers increased risk for a range of debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders. Like many patients with anxiety disorders, individuals with elevated levels of dispositional anxiety are prone to intrusive and distressing thoughts in the absence of immediate threat. Recent electrophysiological research suggests that these symptoms are rooted in the mis-allocation of working memory (WM) resources to threat-related information. Here, functional MRI was used to identify the network of brain regions that support WM for faces and to quantify the allocation of neural resources to threat-related distracters in 81 young adults. Results revealed widespread evidence of mis-allocation. This was evident in both face-selective regions of the fusiform cortex and domain-general regions of the prefrontal and parietal cortices. This bias was exaggerated among individuals with a more anxious disposition. Mediation analyses provided compelling evidence that anxious individuals' tendency to mis-allocate WM resources to threat-related distracters is statistically explained by heightened amygdala reactivity. Collectively, these results provide a neurocognitive framework for understanding the pathways linking anxious phenotypes to the development of internalizing psychopathology and set the stage for developing improved intervention strategies.

Steps Toward Optimal Competitive Scheduling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frank, Jeremy; Crawford, James; Khatib, Lina; Brafman, Ronen

2006-01-01

This paper is concerned with the problem of allocating a unit capacity resource to multiple users within a pre-defined time period. The resource is indivisible, so that at most one user can use it at each time instance. However, different users may use it at different times. The users have independent, se@sh preferences for when and for how long they are allocated this resource. Thus, they value different resource access durations differently, and they value different time slots differently. We seek an optimal allocation schedule for this resource. This problem arises in many institutional settings where, e.g., different departments, agencies, or personal, compete for a single resource. We are particularly motivated by the problem of scheduling NASA's Deep Space Satellite Network (DSN) among different users within NASA. Access to DSN is needed for transmitting data from various space missions to Earth. Each mission has different needs for DSN time, depending on satellite and planetary orbits. Typically, the DSN is over-subscribed, in that not all missions will be allocated as much time as they want. This leads to various inefficiencies - missions spend much time and resource lobbying for their time, often exaggerating their needs. NASA, on the other hand, would like to make optimal use of this resource, ensuring that the good for NASA is maximized. This raises the thorny problem of how to measure the utility to NASA of each allocation. In the typical case, it is difficult for the central agency, NASA in our case, to assess the value of each interval to each user - this is really only known to the users who understand their needs. Thus, our problem is more precisely formulated as follows: find an allocation schedule for the resource that maximizes the sum of users preferences, when the preference values are private information of the users. We bypass this problem by making the assumptions that one can assign money to customers. This assumption is reasonable; a committee is usually in charge of deciding the priority of each mission competing for access to the DSN within a time period while scheduling. Instead, we can assume that the committee assigns a budget to each mission.This paper is concerned with the problem of allocating a unit capacity resource to multiple users within a pre-defined time period. The resource is indivisible, so that at most one user can use it at each time instance. However, different users may use it at different times. The users have independent, se@sh preferences for when and for how long they are allocated this resource. Thus, they value different resource access durations differently, and they value different time slots differently. We seek an optimal allocation schedule for this resource. This problem arises in many institutional settings where, e.g., different departments, agencies, or personal, compete for a single resource. We are particularly motivated by the problem of scheduling NASA's Deep Space Satellite Network (DSN) among different users within NASA. Access to DSN is needed for transmitting data from various space missions to Earth. Each mission has different needs for DSN time, depending on satellite and planetary orbits. Typically, the DSN is over-subscribed, in that not all missions will be allocated as much time as they want. This leads to various inefficiencies - missions spend much time and resource lobbying for their time, often exaggerating their needs. NASA, on the other hand, would like to make optimal use of this resource, ensuring that the good for NASA is maximized. This raises the thorny problem of how to measure the utility to NASA of each allocation. In the typical case, it is difficult for the central agency, NASA in our case, to assess the value of each interval to each user - this is really only known to the users who understand their needs. Thus, our problem is more precisely formulated as follows: find an allocation schedule for the resource that maximizes the sum ofsers preferences, when the preference values are private information of the users. We bypass this problem by making the assumptions that one can assign money to customers. This assumption is reasonable; a committee is usually in charge of deciding the priority of each mission competing for access to the DSN within a time period while scheduling. Instead, we can assume that the committee assigns a budget to each mission.

Seeing beyond borders: a game theoretic approach to anticipate the effect of satellite monitoring data on transboundary freshwater allocation.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Muller, M. F.; Gorelick, S.; Muller-Itten, M. C.

2015-12-01

The allocation of transboundary freshwater resources is a ubiquitous challenge with direct repercussions on the political stability of the concerned region. Under the right conditions, the need to share scarce water resources can act as a catalyst for dialogue between otherwise hostile neighbors. Yet the strategic reluctance of the involved parties to share water diversion and use data remains a major barrier that raises the probability of conflict. In that context, high-quality satellite data are progressively available to monitor water resources beyond political boundaries. These datasets have an increasing role to play in the allocation of shared waters. We develop a game theoretical framework to predict their effect on transboundary water negotiations. We consider repetitions of a game between two countries that have a water allocation agreement for transboundary river flow. The upstream country can observe the available flow in any given year and decide whether or not to provide her neighbor with the agreed upon river discharge. The downstream country cannot observe the initially available flow. He only observes the water allocated provided by his upstream neighbor and can take actions to impose a sanction on her if he can confidently determine that the agreement has been breached. In that context, satellite monitoring data will affect the informational advantage of the upstream country and increase her probability of either abiding by the agreement or being caught when breaching it. We find that the informed equilibrium will produce a lower probability of conflict, but changes in both players' positions regarding equitable allocation may destabilize the existing agreement in the short term.

Efficient Allocation of Resources for Defense of Spatially Distributed Networks Using Agent-Based Simulation.

PubMed

Kroshl, William M; Sarkani, Shahram; Mazzuchi, Thomas A

2015-09-01

This article presents ongoing research that focuses on efficient allocation of defense resources to minimize the damage inflicted on a spatially distributed physical network such as a pipeline, water system, or power distribution system from an attack by an active adversary, recognizing the fundamental difference between preparing for natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or even accidental systems failures and the problem of allocating resources to defend against an opponent who is aware of, and anticipating, the defender's efforts to mitigate the threat. Our approach is to utilize a combination of integer programming and agent-based modeling to allocate the defensive resources. We conceptualize the problem as a Stackelberg "leader follower" game where the defender first places his assets to defend key areas of the network, and the attacker then seeks to inflict the maximum damage possible within the constraints of resources and network structure. The criticality of arcs in the network is estimated by a deterministic network interdiction formulation, which then informs an evolutionary agent-based simulation. The evolutionary agent-based simulation is used to determine the allocation of resources for attackers and defenders that results in evolutionary stable strategies, where actions by either side alone cannot increase its share of victories. We demonstrate these techniques on an example network, comparing the evolutionary agent-based results to a more traditional, probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) approach. Our results show that the agent-based approach results in a greater percentage of defender victories than does the PRA-based approach. © 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.

Integration of hydrologic and water allocation models in basin-scale water resources management considering crop pattern and climate change: Karkheh River Basin in Iran

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The paradigm of integrated water resources management requires coupled analysis of hydrology and water resources in a river basin. Population growth and uncertainties due to climate change make historic data not a reliable source of information for future planning of water resources, hence necessit...

Analysis and Research on the Optimal Allocation of Regional Water Resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

rui-chao, Xi; yu-jie, Gu

2018-06-01

Starting from the basic concept of optimal allocation of water resources, taking the allocation of water resources in Tianjin as an example, the present situation of water resources in Tianjin is analyzed, and the multi-objective optimal allocation model of water resources is used to optimize the allocation of water resources. We use LINGO to solve the model, get the optimal allocation plan that meets the economic and social benefits, and put forward relevant policies and regulations, so as to provide theoretical which is basis for alleviating and solving the problem of water shortage.

Reflection on the history, coordination, and funding trends for U.S. public meat research: information to enhance resource allocation.

PubMed

Miller, L R

2002-08-01

A study was conducted to analyze resource allocation for public meat research in the United States and characterize the portfolio of meat research investments. Trends in the amount of public resources provided for meat research (beef, pork, lamb, and poultry) were analyzed for fiscal years 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, and 1997. An in-depth analysis was conducted for data from fiscal year 1998 to characterize the profile of the research portfolio. Funding levels and scientist-year equivalents were aggregated to represent the measures of resource allocation for three mutually exclusive research categories: 1) meat quality, 2) food safety, and 3) product development and processing. Data for the 1998 profile analysis were derived from a computer search based on the combination of key words and research classification codes to avoid duplication and cluster research projects. Individual research projects were individually reviewed and a percentage was assigned to four mutually exclusive research categories: 1) meat quality, 2) food safety, 3) product development and processing, and 4) marketing. As meat research evolved over the past century, considerable efforts were expended by researchers and administrators to ensure the coordination of research and program relevance. This is demonstrated by the establishment of numerous multistate research committees. Total funding for meat science increased only modestly when adjusted for inflation during the two decades of this study; however, notable changes occurred in the distribution of resources in the portfolio. Funding for meat quality and product development and processing remained virtually unchanged when adjusted for inflation, whereas funding for food safety increased considerably. The total number of scientists conducting meat research remained virtually unchanged during the period, but the proportion allocated to food safety research increased substantially. The federal portion of total funding decreased from 61.3% to 51.6% between 1980 and 1997, whereas the percentage from both state appropriations and private sources increased. Modifications in research emphasis were influenced by industry problems such as meat quality, public perceptions about food safety, the availability of research funding, scientific advances occurring in molecular biology and genetic manipulation, and the changing meat industry. The information in this paper provides administrators and researchers the opportunity to make better informed decisions about resource allocation for meat research.

The routing, modulation level, and spectrum allocation algorithm in the virtual optical network mapping

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Yunyun; Li, Hui; Liu, Yuze; Ji, Yuefeng; Li, Hongfa

2017-10-01

With the development of large video services and cloud computing, the network is increasingly in the form of services. In SDON, the SDN controller holds the underlying physical resource information, thus allocating the appropriate resources and bandwidth to the VON service. However, for some services that require extremely strict QoT (quality of transmission), the shortest distance path algorithm is often unable to meet the requirements because it does not take the link spectrum resources into account. And in accordance with the choice of the most unoccupied links, there may be more spectrum fragments. So here we propose a new RMLSA (the routing, modulation Level, and spectrum allocation) algorithm to reduce the blocking probability. The results show about 40% less blocking probability than the shortest-distance algorithm and the minimum usage of the spectrum priority algorithm. This algorithm is used to satisfy strict request of QoT for demands.

Business School Computer Usage, Fourth Annual UCLA Survey.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frand, Jason L.; And Others

The changing nature of the business school computing environment is monitored in a report whose purpose is to provide deans and other policy-makers with information to use in making allocation decisions and program plans. This survey focuses on resource allocations of 249 accredited U.S. business schools and 15 Canadian schools. A total of 128…

Optimal allocation of invasive species surveillance with the maximum expected coverage concept

Treesearch

Denys Yemshanov; Robert G. Haight; Frank H. Koch; Bo Lu; Robert Venette; D. Barry Lyons; Taylor Scarr; Krista Ryall; Brian. Leung

2015-01-01

We address the problem of geographically allocating scarce survey resources to detect pests in their pathways of introduction given information about their likelihood of movement between origins and destinations. We introduce a model for selecting destination sites for survey that departs from the aim of reducing propagule pressure (PP) in pest destinations and instead...

Grant Formulas. A Catalog of Federal Aid to States and Localities. Report to Congressional Committees.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

General Accounting Office, Washington, DC. Div. of Human Resources.

This report is a resource document which includes a catalog that explains how formulas for federal programs are used to allocate assistance to state and local governments. In addition, it provides information on the agencies and congressional committees that have jurisdiction over these programs, the amount of money allocated through these…

Grid accounting service: state and future development

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Levshina, T.; Sehgal, C.; Bockelman, B.

2014-01-01

During the last decade, large-scale federated distributed infrastructures have been continually developed and expanded. One of the crucial components of a cyber-infrastructure is an accounting service that collects data related to resource utilization and identity of users using resources. The accounting service is important for verifying pledged resource allocation per particular groups and users, providing reports for funding agencies and resource providers, and understanding hardware provisioning requirements. It can also be used for end-to-end troubleshooting as well as billing purposes. In this work we describe Gratia, a federated accounting service jointly developed at Fermilab and Holland Computing Center at Universitymore » of Nebraska-Lincoln. The Open Science Grid, Fermilab, HCC, and several other institutions have used Gratia in production for several years. The current development activities include expanding Virtual Machines provisioning information, XSEDE allocation usage accounting, and Campus Grids resource utilization. We also identify the direction of future work: improvement and expansion of Cloud accounting, persistent and elastic storage space allocation, and the incorporation of WAN and LAN network metrics.« less

Children’s Recognition of Fairness and Others’ Welfare in a Resource Allocation Task: Age Related Changes

PubMed Central

Rizzo, Michael T.; Elenbaas, Laura; Cooley, Shelby; Killen, Melanie

2016-01-01

The present study investigated age-related changes regarding children’s (N = 136) conceptions of fairness and others’ welfare in a merit-based resource allocation paradigm. To test whether children at 3- to 5-years-old and 6- to 8-years-old took others’ welfare into account when dividing resources, in addition to merit and equality concerns, children were asked to allocate, judge, and reason about allocations of necessary (needed to avoid harm) and luxury (enjoyable to have) resources to a hardworking and a lazy character. While 3- to 5-year-olds did not differentiate between distributing luxury and necessary resources, 6- to 8-year-olds allocated luxury resources more meritoriously than necessary resources. Further, children based their allocations of necessary resources on concerns for others’ welfare, rather than merit, even when one character was described as working harder. The findings revealed that, with age, children incorporated the concerns for others’ welfare and merit into their conceptions of fairness in a resource allocation context, and prioritized these concerns differently depending on whether they were allocating luxury or necessary resources. Further, with age, children weighed multiple moral concerns including equality, merit, and others’ welfare, when determining the fair allocation of resources. PMID:27455189

The ontogeny of postmaturation resource allocation in turtles.

PubMed

Bowden, R M; Paitz, Ryan T; Janzen, Fredric J

2011-01-01

Resource-allocation decisions vary with life-history strategy, and growing evidence suggests that long-lived endothermic vertebrates direct resources toward growth and self-maintenance when young, increasing allocation toward reproductive effort over time. Few studies have tracked the ontogeny of resource allocation (energy, steroid hormones, etc.) in long-lived ectothermic vertebrates, limiting our understanding of the generality of life-history strategies among vertebrates. We investigated how reproductively mature female painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) from two distinct age classes allocated resources over a 4-yr period and whether resource-allocation patterns varied with nesting experience. We examined age-related variation in body size, egg mass, reproductive frequency, and yolk steroids and report that younger females were smaller and allocated fewer resources to reproduction than did older females. Testosterone levels were higher in eggs from younger females, whereas eggs from second (seasonal) clutches contained higher concentrations of progesterone and estradiol. These allocation patterns resulted in older, larger females laying larger eggs and producing second clutches more frequently than their younger counterparts. We conclude that resource-allocation patterns do vary with age in a long-lived ectotherm.

Optimized maritime emergency resource allocation under dynamic demand.

PubMed

Zhang, Wenfen; Yan, Xinping; Yang, Jiaqi

2017-01-01

Emergency resource is important for people evacuation and property rescue when accident occurs. The relief efforts could be promoted by a reasonable emergency resource allocation schedule in advance. As the marine environment is complicated and changeful, the place, type, severity of maritime accident is uncertain and stochastic, bringing about dynamic demand of emergency resource. Considering dynamic demand, how to make a reasonable emergency resource allocation schedule is challenging. The key problem is to determine the optimal stock of emergency resource for supplier centers to improve relief efforts. This paper studies the dynamic demand, and which is defined as a set. Then a maritime emergency resource allocation model with uncertain data is presented. Afterwards, a robust approach is developed and used to make sure that the resource allocation schedule performs well with dynamic demand. Finally, a case study shows that the proposed methodology is feasible in maritime emergency resource allocation. The findings could help emergency manager to schedule the emergency resource allocation more flexibly in terms of dynamic demand.

Optimized maritime emergency resource allocation under dynamic demand

PubMed Central

Yan, Xinping; Yang, Jiaqi

2017-01-01

Emergency resource is important for people evacuation and property rescue when accident occurs. The relief efforts could be promoted by a reasonable emergency resource allocation schedule in advance. As the marine environment is complicated and changeful, the place, type, severity of maritime accident is uncertain and stochastic, bringing about dynamic demand of emergency resource. Considering dynamic demand, how to make a reasonable emergency resource allocation schedule is challenging. The key problem is to determine the optimal stock of emergency resource for supplier centers to improve relief efforts. This paper studies the dynamic demand, and which is defined as a set. Then a maritime emergency resource allocation model with uncertain data is presented. Afterwards, a robust approach is developed and used to make sure that the resource allocation schedule performs well with dynamic demand. Finally, a case study shows that the proposed methodology is feasible in maritime emergency resource allocation. The findings could help emergency manager to schedule the emergency resource allocation more flexibly in terms of dynamic demand. PMID:29240792

[Equity of Health Resources Allocation in Minority Regions of Sichuan Province].

PubMed

Chen, Nan; Tang, Wen; Liang, Zhi; Zou, Bo; Li, Xiao-song

2016-03-01

To determine equity of health resources allocation in minority regions of Sichuan province from 2009 to 2013. Health resources distribution equity among populations and across geographic catchments were measured using coefficients of Inter-Individual differences and Individual-Mean differences. Health resources, especially human resources, in minority regions increased slowly over the years. Poorer allocation equity was found in nursing resources compared with doctors and hospital beds. Better distribution equity was found among populations than across geographic catchments. High levels of equity in resource distributions among populations and across geographic catchments were found in Aba. In Liangshan, more equitable distributions were found in doctors and hospital beds compared with nurses. The rest of minority regions had poor absolute allocation equity in doctors and hospital beds among populations. Appropriate allocation of health resources can promote health development. Health resources allocation in minority regions of Sichuan province is unreasonable. The government and relevant departments should take actions to optimize health resources allocations.

Cost-effectiveness analysis and efficient use of the pharmaceutical budget: the key role of clinical pharmacologists

PubMed Central

Edlin, Richard; Round, Jeff; Hulme, Claire; McCabe, Christopher

2010-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about cost-effectiveness analysis and the roles of clinical pharmacologists generally in providing efficient health care. The paper highlights the potential consequences of ‘off-label prescribing’ and ‘indication creep’ behaviour given slower growth (or potential cuts) in the NHS budget. This paper highlights the key roles of clinical pharmacologists in delivering an efficient health care system when resources are allocated using cost-effectiveness analyses. It describes what cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is and how incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) are used to identify efficient options. After outlining the theoretical framework within which using CEA can promote the efficient allocation of the health care budget, it considers the place of disinvestment within achieving efficient resource allocation. Clinical pharmacologists are argued to be critical to providing improved population health under CEA-based resource allocation processes because of their roles in implementation and disinvestment. Given that the challenges facing the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) are likely to increase, this paper sets out the stark choices facing clinical pharmacologists. PMID:20716234

Cost-effectiveness analysis and efficient use of the pharmaceutical budget: the key role of clinical pharmacologists.

PubMed

Edlin, Richard; Round, Jeff; Hulme, Claire; McCabe, Christopher

2010-09-01

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about cost-effectiveness analysis and the roles of clinical pharmacologists generally in providing efficient health care. The paper highlights the potential consequences of 'off-label prescribing' and 'indication creep' behaviour given slower growth (or potential cuts) in the NHS budget. This paper highlights the key roles of clinical pharmacologists in delivering an efficient health care system when resources are allocated using cost-effectiveness analyses. It describes what cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is and how incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) are used to identify efficient options. After outlining the theoretical framework within which using CEA can promote the efficient allocation of the health care budget, it considers the place of disinvestment within achieving efficient resource allocation. Clinical pharmacologists are argued to be critical to providing improved population health under CEA-based resource allocation processes because of their roles in implementation and disinvestment. Given that the challenges facing the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) are likely to increase, this paper sets out the stark choices facing clinical pharmacologists.

Simulating Water Resource Disputes of Transboundary River: A Case Study of the Zhanghe River Basin, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yuan, Liang; He, Weijun; Liao, Zaiyi; Mulugeta Degefu, Dagmawi; An, Min; Zhang, Zhaofang

2018-01-01

Water resource disputes within transboundary river basin has been hindering the sustainable use of water resources and efficient management of environment. The problem is characterized by a complex information feedback loop that involves socio-economic and environmental systems. This paper presents a system dynamics based model that can simulate the dynamics of water demand, water supply, water adequacy and water allocation instability within a river basin. It was used for a case study in the Zhanghe River basin of China. The base scenario has been investigated for the time period between 2000 and 2050. The result shows that the Chinese national government should change the water allocation scheme of downstream Zhanghe River established in 1989, more water need to be allocated to the downstream cities and the actual allocation should be adjusted to reflect the need associated with the socio-economic and environmental changes within the region, and system dynamics improves the understanding of concepts and system interactions by offering a comprehensive and integrated view of the physical, social, economic, environmental, and political systems.

Investing Wisely in Information Technology: Asking the Right Questions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breivik, Patricia Senn

1993-01-01

College administrators are offered a series of questions to ask in evaluating the appropriateness of information technology for their campuses. Issues addressed include defining institutional goals and the role of information technology in them, determining the most effective organization of information resources and technology, and allocation of…

Handover Control Method Using Resource Reservation in Mobile Multimedia Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Dong Chun; Lee, Jong Chan

When handover events occur during the transmission of multimedia traffic, efficient handover control procedures and radio resource allocation are necessary to maintain the same QoS of transmitted multimedia traffic because the QoS may be degraded by additional delay and information loss. In this paper we propose a new handover control method for the next generation mobile multimedia networks, in which the handover setup process is done in advance of a handover request by predicting the handover cell from mobile terminal's current position. The handover procedures for real-time sessions are performed based on the handover cell information and the resource reservation condition. The radio resources in the estimated adjacent cells should be reserved and allocated to guarantee the continuity of the real-time sessions. We conduct a simulation model that is focused on the handover failure rate and packet loss rate. The simulation results show that our proposed method provides better performance than the previous methods.

Managerial Accounting in Library and Information Science Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes, Robert M.

1983-01-01

Explores meaning of managerial accounting in libraries and discusses instructional program for students of library and information science based on experience in School of Library and Information Science at University of California, Los Angeles. Management decision making (budgeting, performance evaluation, overhead, resource allocation,…

Optimality versus stability in water resource allocation.

PubMed

Read, Laura; Madani, Kaveh; Inanloo, Bahareh

2014-01-15

Water allocation is a growing concern in a developing world where limited resources like fresh water are in greater demand by more parties. Negotiations over allocations often involve multiple groups with disparate social, economic, and political status and needs, who are seeking a management solution for a wide range of demands. Optimization techniques for identifying the Pareto-optimal (social planner solution) to multi-criteria multi-participant problems are commonly implemented, although often reaching agreement for this solution is difficult. In negotiations with multiple-decision makers, parties who base decisions on individual rationality may find the social planner solution to be unfair, thus creating a need to evaluate the willingness to cooperate and practicality of a cooperative allocation solution, i.e., the solution's stability. This paper suggests seeking solutions for multi-participant resource allocation problems through an economics-based power index allocation method. This method can inform on allocation schemes that quantify a party's willingness to participate in a negotiation rather than opt for no agreement. Through comparison of the suggested method with a range of distance-based multi-criteria decision making rules, namely, least squares, MAXIMIN, MINIMAX, and compromise programming, this paper shows that optimality and stability can produce different allocation solutions. The mismatch between the socially-optimal alternative and the most stable alternative can potentially result in parties leaving the negotiation as they may be too dissatisfied with their resource share. This finding has important policy implications as it justifies why stakeholders may not accept the socially optimal solution in practice, and underlies the necessity of considering stability where it may be more appropriate to give up an unstable Pareto-optimal solution for an inferior stable one. Authors suggest assessing the stability of an allocation solution as an additional component to an analysis that seeks to distribute water in a negotiated process. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Status and Prospects of Library/Learning Resource Centers at Michigan Community Colleges.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Platte, James P., Ed.

In 1986, a study was conducted to examine the status of the libraries and learning resource centers (LRC's) at Michigan community colleges. A questionnaire was used to gather background on the colleges, and information on the types and scope of services provided by the libraries/LRC's, their organizational structure, resource allocation, and key…

Decision support system for health care resources allocation

PubMed Central

Sebaa, Abderrazak; Nouicer, Amina; Tari, AbdelKamel; Tarik, Ramtani; Abdellah, Ouhab

2017-01-01

Background A study about healthcare resources can improve decisions regarding the allotment and mobilization of medical resources and to better guide future investment in the health sector. Aim The aim of this work was to design and implement a decision support system to improve medical resources allocation of Bejaia region. Methods To achieve the retrospective cohort study, we integrated existing clinical databases from different Bejaia department health sector institutions (an Algerian department) to collect information about patients from January 2015 through December 2015. Data integration was performed in a data warehouse using the multi-dimensional model and OLAP cube. During implementation, we used Microsoft SQL server 2012 and Microsoft Excel 2010. Results A medical decision support platform was introduced, and was implemented during the planning stages allowing the management of different medical orientations, it provides better apportionment and allotment of medical resources, and ensures that the allocation of health care resources has optimal effects on improving health. Conclusion In this study, we designed and implemented a decision support system which would improve health care in Bejaia department to especially assist in the selection of the optimum location of health center and hospital, the specialty of the health center, the medical equipment and the medical staff. PMID:28848645

Decision support system for health care resources allocation.

PubMed

Sebaa, Abderrazak; Nouicer, Amina; Tari, AbdelKamel; Tarik, Ramtani; Abdellah, Ouhab

2017-06-01

A study about healthcare resources can improve decisions regarding the allotment and mobilization of medical resources and to better guide future investment in the health sector. The aim of this work was to design and implement a decision support system to improve medical resources allocation of Bejaia region. To achieve the retrospective cohort study, we integrated existing clinical databases from different Bejaia department health sector institutions (an Algerian department) to collect information about patients from January 2015 through December 2015. Data integration was performed in a data warehouse using the multi-dimensional model and OLAP cube. During implementation, we used Microsoft SQL server 2012 and Microsoft Excel 2010. A medical decision support platform was introduced, and was implemented during the planning stages allowing the management of different medical orientations, it provides better apportionment and allotment of medical resources, and ensures that the allocation of health care resources has optimal effects on improving health. In this study, we designed and implemented a decision support system which would improve health care in Bejaia department to especially assist in the selection of the optimum location of health center and hospital, the specialty of the health center, the medical equipment and the medical staff.

Allocating HIV prevention funds in the United States: recommendations from an optimization model.

PubMed

Lasry, Arielle; Sansom, Stephanie L; Hicks, Katherine A; Uzunangelov, Vladislav

2012-01-01

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had an annual budget of approximately $327 million to fund health departments and community-based organizations for core HIV testing and prevention programs domestically between 2001 and 2006. Annual HIV incidence has been relatively stable since the year 2000 and was estimated at 48,600 cases in 2006 and 48,100 in 2009. Using estimates on HIV incidence, prevalence, prevention program costs and benefits, and current spending, we created an HIV resource allocation model that can generate a mathematically optimal allocation of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention's extramural budget for HIV testing, and counseling and education programs. The model's data inputs and methods were reviewed by subject matter experts internal and external to the CDC via an extensive validation process. The model projects the HIV epidemic for the United States under different allocation strategies under a fixed budget. Our objective is to support national HIV prevention planning efforts and inform the decision-making process for HIV resource allocation. Model results can be summarized into three main recommendations. First, more funds should be allocated to testing and these should further target men who have sex with men and injecting drug users. Second, counseling and education interventions ought to provide a greater focus on HIV positive persons who are aware of their status. And lastly, interventions should target those at high risk for transmitting or acquiring HIV, rather than lower-risk members of the general population. The main conclusions of the HIV resource allocation model have played a role in the introduction of new programs and provide valuable guidance to target resources and improve the impact of HIV prevention efforts in the United States.

Fort Benning Land-Use Planning and Management Study

DTIC Science & Technology

1990-04-01

process is three-tiered: (a) an initial phase that results in preliminary allocations for natural resources, (b) a second phase that focuses on...allocations of military training requirements, and (c) a final phase that resolves conflicts between the military and natural resource requirements and...assigns final allocations. 34. Initial phase : Natural resource allocations. The first step in this phase was to make allocations among natural resource

Factors in Management Information System Failures.

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-12-08

information system project. Several areas are examined, including: (1) technology, (2) the human resource, (3) monetary allocations, and (4) the...This report surveys current literature (1970 - 1980) on factors that can adversely affect the successful completion and execution of a management

Results from a preliminary study to develop the quality adjustments for quality adjusted life year values for Trinidad and Tobago.

PubMed

Bailey, H

2013-07-01

No country can afford to provide all necessary healthcare for its citizens, so prioritization among interventions must feature in all health systems. Resources in health should be allocated among interventions/facilities/patients in such a way as to be in line with the objectives of the health system. To achieve this, resource allocation decisions must be informed by the relative contributions that prospective interventions will make to societal health and to costs. Internationally, the EQ-5D based quality adjusted life year (QALY) now dominates this kind of analysis. This paper reports on a pilot study to develop an EQ-5D-3L value set for Trinidad and Tobago based on a protocol that avoids some of the issues that are associated with other approaches to developing such value sets such as the complex elicitation tasks that respondents must carry out, and the large respondent samples required for collecting multiple valuation subset values using blocked designs. An orthogonal discrete choice experiment design was used to elicit a set of choices from a sample of respondents. The choice data were analysed using mixed multinomial logistic regression to produce an internally valid model that predicts well. This paper marks an important milestone in the development of health resource allocation in the Caribbean. It sets out the importance of incorporating the impact of health interventions to inform health resource allocation decisions, describes the elicitation and analysis methods used in the pilot and provides an illustration of the use of the EQ-5D value set.

System Resource Allocations | High-Performance Computing | NREL

Science.gov Websites

Allocations System Resource Allocations To use NREL's high-performance computing (HPC) resources : Compute hours on NREL HPC Systems including Peregrine and Eagle Storage space (in Terabytes) on Peregrine , Eagle and Gyrfalcon. Allocations are principally done in response to an annual call for allocation

Algorithms for synthesizing management solutions based on OLAP-technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pishchukhin, A. M.; Akhmedyanova, G. F.

2018-05-01

OLAP technologies are a convenient means of analyzing large amounts of information. An attempt was made in their work to improve the synthesis of optimal management decisions. The developed algorithms allow forecasting the needs and accepted management decisions on the main types of the enterprise resources. Their advantage is the efficiency, based on the simplicity of quadratic functions and differential equations of only the first order. At the same time, the optimal redistribution of resources between different types of products from the assortment of the enterprise is carried out, and the optimal allocation of allocated resources in time. The proposed solutions can be placed on additional specially entered coordinates of the hypercube representing the data warehouse.

Education and Human Resources Sector Assessment Manual.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pigozzi, Mary Joy; Cieutat, Victor J.

This manual endorses and adopts the sector-assessment approach for planning and managing the allocation of educational resources. Chapter 1 presents the manual's goals. Chapter 2 describes the manual's content and information sources, explains the term "sector assessment," identifies the groups that benefit from recommendations made by…

75 FR 66379 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection: Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-10-28

... DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Health Resources and Services Administration Agency... Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau to track spending requirements for... collected. However, the first report would track the allocation of the award at the beginning of the grant...

Local public health resource allocation: limited choices and strategic decisions.

PubMed

Bekemeier, Betty; Chen, Anthony L-T; Kawakyu, Nami; Yang, Youngran

2013-12-01

Local health department leaders are expected to improve the health of their populations as they "use and contribute to" the evidence base for practice, but effectively providing and utilizing data and evidence for local public health decision making has proven difficult. This study was conducted in 2011 and initiated by Washington State's public health practice-based research network to identify factors influencing local resource allocation and programmatic decisions among public health leaders facing severe funding losses. Quantitative data informed sampling for the collection of interview data. Qualitative methods were used to capture diverse insights of Washington State's local public health leaders in making decisions regarding resource allocation. Local decision-making authority was perceived as greatly restricted by what public health activities were legally mandated and the categoric nature of funding sources, even as some leaders exercised deliberate strategic approaches. One's workforce and board of health were also influential in making decisions regarding resource allocations. Challenges were expressed regarding making use of data and research evidence for decision making. Data were analyzed in 2011-2012. Programmatic mandates, funding restrictions, local stakeholders, and workforce capacity appear to trump factors such as research evidence and perceived community need in public health resource allocation. Study findings highlight tensions between the literature descriptions of what "should" influence decision making in local public health and the realities of practice. Advancements in practice-based research and evidence-based decision making, however, provide opportunities for strengthening the development of evidence and research translation for local decision making to maximize resources and promote effective service provision. © 2013 American Journal of Preventive Medicine Published by American Journal of Preventive Medicine All rights reserved.

Integrating Information Technologies Into Large Organizations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gottlich, Gretchen; Meyer, John M.; Nelson, Michael L.; Bianco, David J.

1997-01-01

NASA Langley Research Center's product is aerospace research information. To this end, Langley uses information technology tools in three distinct ways. First, information technology tools are used in the production of information via computation, analysis, data collection and reduction. Second, information technology tools assist in streamlining business processes, particularly those that are primarily communication based. By applying these information tools to administrative activities, Langley spends fewer resources on managing itself and can allocate more resources for research. Third, Langley uses information technology tools to disseminate its aerospace research information, resulting in faster turn around time from the laboratory to the end-customer.

Predicting Fire Season Severity in the Pacific Northwest

Treesearch

Paul Werth

2006-01-01

Projections of fire season severity that integrate historical weather and fire information can be used by fire managers when making decisions about allocating and prioritizing firefighting resources. They enable fire managers to anticipate fire activity and pre-position resources to maximize public and firefighter safety, reduce environmental impacts, and lower...

76 FR 54499 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission to OMB for Review; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-09-01

.... Description: NCUA utilizes the information to monitor financial conditions in corporate credit unions, and to allocate supervision and examination resources. Respondents: Corporate credit unions, or ``banker's banks... collection of information: Title: Corporate Credit Union Monthly Call Report. OMB Number: 3133-0067. Form...

32 CFR 1901.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... cases consistent with established law. The Director, Information Management through the Agency Release... imposed on the component by the Director of Central Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information... all members of the public under the various information review and disclosure laws. (b) Discharge of...

32 CFR 1901.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... cases consistent with established law. The Director, Information Management through the Agency Release... imposed on the component by the Director of Central Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information... all members of the public under the various information review and disclosure laws. (b) Discharge of...

32 CFR 1901.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... cases consistent with established law. The Director, Information Management through the Agency Release... imposed on the component by the Director of Central Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information... all members of the public under the various information review and disclosure laws. (b) Discharge of...

45 CFR 1357.10 - Scope and definitions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... improvement and allocation of resources. Child welfare services means public social services directed to... interaction with other families and with program staff; (5) Transportation, information and referral services...

Modeling Resource Hotspots: Critical Linkages and Processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Daher, B.; Mohtar, R.; Pistikopoulos, E.; McCarl, B. A.; Yang, Y.

2017-12-01

Growing demands for interconnected resources emerge in the form of hotspots of varying characteristics. The business as usual allocation model cannot address the current, let alone anticipated, complex and highly interconnected resource challenges we face. A new paradigm for resource allocation must be adopted: one that identifies cross-sectoral synergies and, that moves away from silos to recognition of the nexus and integration of it. Doing so will result in new opportunities for business growth, economic development, and improved social well-being. Solutions and interventions must be multi-faceted; opportunities should be identified with holistic trade-offs in mind. No single solution fits all: different hotspots will require distinct interventions. Hotspots have varying resource constraints, stakeholders, goals and targets. The San Antonio region represents a complex resource hotspot with promising potential: its rapidly growing population, the Eagle Ford shale play, and the major agricultural activity there makes it a hotspot with many competing demands. Stakeholders need tools to allow them to knowledgeably address impending resource challenges. This study will identify contemporary WEF nexus questions and critical system interlinkages that will inform the modeling of the tightly interconnected resource systems and stresses using the San Antonio Region as a base; it will conceptualize a WEF nexus modeling framework, and develop assessment criteria to inform integrative planning and decision making.

Equity in health care in Namibia: developing a needs-based resource allocation formula using principal components analysis

PubMed Central

Zere, Eyob; Mandlhate, Custodia; Mbeeli, Thomas; Shangula, Kalumbi; Mutirua, Kauto; Kapenambili, William

2007-01-01

Background The pace of redressing inequities in the distribution of scarce health care resources in Namibia has been slow. This is due primarily to adherence to the historical incrementalist type of budgeting that has been used to allocate resources. Those regions with high levels of deprivation and relatively greater need for health care resources have been getting less than their fair share. To rectify this situation, which was inherited from the apartheid system, there is a need to develop a needs-based resource allocation mechanism. Methods Principal components analysis was employed to compute asset indices from asset based and health-related variables, using data from the Namibia demographic and health survey of 2000. The asset indices then formed the basis of proposals for regional weights for establishing a needs-based resource allocation formula. Results Comparing the current allocations of public sector health car resources with estimates using a needs based formula showed that regions with higher levels of need currently receive fewer resources than do regions with lower need. Conclusion To address the prevailing inequities in resource allocation, the Ministry of Health and Social Services should abandon the historical incrementalist method of budgeting/resource allocation and adopt a more appropriate allocation mechanism that incorporates measures of need for health care. PMID:17391533

Equity in health care in Namibia: developing a needs-based resource allocation formula using principal components analysis.

PubMed

Zere, Eyob; Mandlhate, Custodia; Mbeeli, Thomas; Shangula, Kalumbi; Mutirua, Kauto; Kapenambili, William

2007-03-29

The pace of redressing inequities in the distribution of scarce health care resources in Namibia has been slow. This is due primarily to adherence to the historical incrementalist type of budgeting that has been used to allocate resources. Those regions with high levels of deprivation and relatively greater need for health care resources have been getting less than their fair share. To rectify this situation, which was inherited from the apartheid system, there is a need to develop a needs-based resource allocation mechanism. Principal components analysis was employed to compute asset indices from asset based and health-related variables, using data from the Namibia demographic and health survey of 2000. The asset indices then formed the basis of proposals for regional weights for establishing a needs-based resource allocation formula. Comparing the current allocations of public sector health car resources with estimates using a needs based formula showed that regions with higher levels of need currently receive fewer resources than do regions with lower need. To address the prevailing inequities in resource allocation, the Ministry of Health and Social Services should abandon the historical incrementalist method of budgeting/resource allocation and adopt a more appropriate allocation mechanism that incorporates measures of need for health care.

Assessing the Impact of Model Parameter Uncertainty in Simulating Grass Biomass Using a Hybrid Carbon Allocation Strategy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reyes, J. J.; Adam, J. C.; Tague, C.

2016-12-01

Grasslands play an important role in agricultural production as forage for livestock; they also provide a diverse set of ecosystem services including soil carbon (C) storage. The partitioning of C between above and belowground plant compartments (i.e. allocation) is influenced by both plant characteristics and environmental conditions. The objectives of this study are to 1) develop and evaluate a hybrid C allocation strategy suitable for grasslands, and 2) apply this strategy to examine the importance of various parameters related to biogeochemical cycling, photosynthesis, allocation, and soil water drainage on above and belowground biomass. We include allocation as an important process in quantifying the model parameter uncertainty, which identifies the most influential parameters and what processes may require further refinement. For this, we use the Regional Hydro-ecologic Simulation System, a mechanistic model that simulates coupled water and biogeochemical processes. A Latin hypercube sampling scheme was used to develop parameter sets for calibration and evaluation of allocation strategies, as well as parameter uncertainty analysis. We developed the hybrid allocation strategy to integrate both growth-based and resource-limited allocation mechanisms. When evaluating the new strategy simultaneously for above and belowground biomass, it produced a larger number of less biased parameter sets: 16% more compared to resource-limited and 9% more compared to growth-based. This also demonstrates its flexible application across diverse plant types and environmental conditions. We found that higher parameter importance corresponded to sub- or supra-optimal resource availability (i.e. water, nutrients) and temperature ranges (i.e. too hot or cold). For example, photosynthesis-related parameters were more important at sites warmer than the theoretical optimal growth temperature. Therefore, larger values of parameter importance indicate greater relative sensitivity in adequately representing the relevant process to capture limiting resources or manage atypical environmental conditions. These results may inform future experimental work by focusing efforts on quantifying specific parameters under various environmental conditions or across diverse plant functional types.

Fuzzy-logic based Q-Learning interference management algorithms in two-tier networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Qiang; Xu, Zezhong; Li, Li; Zheng, Yan

2017-10-01

Unloading from macrocell network and enhancing coverage can be realized by deploying femtocells in the indoor scenario. However, the system performance of the two-tier network could be impaired by the co-tier and cross-tier interference. In this paper, a distributed resource allocation scheme is studied when each femtocell base station is self-governed and the resource cannot be assigned centrally through the gateway. A novel Q-Learning interference management scheme is proposed, that is divided into cooperative and independent part. In the cooperative algorithm, the interference information is exchanged between the cell-edge users which are classified by the fuzzy logic in the same cell. Meanwhile, we allocate the orthogonal subchannels to the high-rate cell-edge users to disperse the interference power when the data rate requirement is satisfied. The resource is assigned directly according to the minimum power principle in the independent algorithm. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the significant performance improvements in terms of the average data rate, interference power and energy efficiency over the cutting-edge resource allocation algorithms.

Stochastic resource allocation in emergency departments with a multi-objective simulation optimization algorithm.

PubMed

Feng, Yen-Yi; Wu, I-Chin; Chen, Tzu-Li

2017-03-01

The number of emergency cases or emergency room visits rapidly increases annually, thus leading to an imbalance in supply and demand and to the long-term overcrowding of hospital emergency departments (EDs). However, current solutions to increase medical resources and improve the handling of patient needs are either impractical or infeasible in the Taiwanese environment. Therefore, EDs must optimize resource allocation given limited medical resources to minimize the average length of stay of patients and medical resource waste costs. This study constructs a multi-objective mathematical model for medical resource allocation in EDs in accordance with emergency flow or procedure. The proposed mathematical model is complex and difficult to solve because its performance value is stochastic; furthermore, the model considers both objectives simultaneously. Thus, this study develops a multi-objective simulation optimization algorithm by integrating a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA II) with multi-objective computing budget allocation (MOCBA) to address the challenges of multi-objective medical resource allocation. NSGA II is used to investigate plausible solutions for medical resource allocation, and MOCBA identifies effective sets of feasible Pareto (non-dominated) medical resource allocation solutions in addition to effectively allocating simulation or computation budgets. The discrete event simulation model of ED flow is inspired by a Taiwan hospital case and is constructed to estimate the expected performance values of each medical allocation solution as obtained through NSGA II. Finally, computational experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness and performance of the integrated NSGA II and MOCBA method, as well as to derive non-dominated medical resource allocation solutions from the algorithms.

Methodological variation in economic evaluations conducted in low- and middle-income countries: information for reference case development.

PubMed

Santatiwongchai, Benjarin; Chantarastapornchit, Varit; Wilkinson, Thomas; Thiboonboon, Kittiphong; Rattanavipapong, Waranya; Walker, Damian G; Chalkidou, Kalipso; Teerawattananon, Yot

2015-01-01

Information generated from economic evaluation is increasingly being used to inform health resource allocation decisions globally, including in low- and middle- income countries. However, a crucial consideration for users of the information at a policy level, e.g. funding agencies, is whether the studies are comparable, provide sufficient detail to inform policy decision making, and incorporate inputs from data sources that are reliable and relevant to the context. This review was conducted to inform a methodological standardisation workstream at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and assesses BMGF-funded cost-per-DALY economic evaluations in four programme areas (malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and vaccines) in terms of variation in methodology, use of evidence, and quality of reporting. The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in the three areas of assessment, and support the case for the introduction of a standardised methodology or reference case by the BMGF. The findings are also instructive for all institutions that fund economic evaluations in LMICs and who have a desire to improve the ability of economic evaluations to inform resource allocation decisions.

A review of alternative approaches to healthcare resource allocation.

PubMed

Petrou, S; Wolstenholme, J

2000-07-01

The resources available for healthcare are limited compared with demand, if not need, and all healthcare systems, regardless of their financing and organisation, employ mechanisms to ration or prioritise finite healthcare resources. This paper reviews alternative approaches that can be used to allocate healthcare resources. It discusses the problems encountered when allocating healthcare resources according to free market principles. It then proceeds to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of alternative resource allocation approaches that can be applied to public health systems. These include: (i) approaches based on the concept of meeting the needs of the population to maximising its capacity to benefit from interventions; (ii) economic approaches that identify the most efficient allocation of resources with the view of maximising health benefits or other measures of social welfare; (iii) approaches that seek to ration healthcare by age; and (iv) approaches that resolve resource allocation disputes through debate and bargaining. At present, there appears to be no consensus about the relative importance of the potentially conflicting principles that can be used to guide resource allocation decisions. It is concluded that whatever shape tomorrow's health service takes, the requirement to make equitable and efficient use of finite healthcare resources will remain.

National equity of health resource allocation in China: data from 2009 to 2013.

PubMed

Liu, Wen; Liu, Ying; Twum, Peter; Li, Shixue

2016-04-19

The inequitable allocation of health resources is a worldwide problem, and it is also one of the obstacles facing for health services utilization in China. A new round of health care reform which contains the important aspect of improving the equity in health resource allocation was released by Chinese government in 2009. The aim of this study is to understand the changes of equity in health resource allocation from 2009 to 2013, and make a further inquiry of the main factors which influence the equity conditions in China. Data resources are the China Health Statistics Yearbook (2014) and the China Statistical Yearbook (2014). Four indicators were chosen to measure the trends in equity of health resource allocation. Data were disaggregated by three geographical regions: west, central, and east. Theil index was used to calculate the degree of unfairness. The total amount of health care resources in China had been increasing in recent years. However, the per 10, 000 km(2) number of health resources showed a huge gap in different regions, and per 10, 000 capita health resources ownership showed a relatively small disparities at the same time. The index of health resources showed an overall downward trend, in which health financial investment the most unfair from 2009 to 2012 and the number of health institutions the most unfair in 2013. The equity of health resources allocation in eastern regions was the worst except for the aspect of health technical personnel allocation. The regional contribution rates were lower than that of the inter-regional contribution rates which were all beyond 60 %. The equity of health resource allocation improved gradually from 2009 to 2013. However, the internal differences within the eastern region still have a huge impact on the overall equity in health resource allocation. The tough issues of inequitable in health resource allocation should be resolved by comprehensive measures from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Resource Allocation Based on Evaluation of Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fransson, Rune

1985-01-01

At Sweden's Karolinska Institute, a resource allocation model for medical research in use since 1970 allows the research activity of the different departments to affect resource allocation direclty. (MSE)

Efficient resource allocation scheme for visible-light communication system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Woo-Chan; Bae, Chi-Sung; Cho, Dong-Ho; Shin, Hong-Seok; Jung, D. K.; Oh, Y. J.

2009-01-01

A visible-light communication utilizing LED has many advantagies such as visibility of information, high SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), low installation cost, usage of existing illuminators, and high security. Furthermore, exponentially increasing needs and quality of LED have helped the development of visible-light communication. The visibility is the most attractive property in visible-light communication system, but it is difficult to ensure visibility and transmission efficiency simultaneously during initial access because of the small amount of initial access process signals. In this paper, we propose an efficient resource allocation scheme at initial access for ensuring visibility with high resource utilization rate and low data transmission failure rate. The performance has been evaluated through the numerical analysis and simulation results.

78 FR 76151 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-12-16

... better allocate resources. Methodological tests will continue to be designed to examine the feasibility... reporting. Research will involve focus groups, cognitive laboratory testing, customer satisfaction surveys...

Budget and financing of mental health services: baseline information on 89 countries from WHO's project atlas.

PubMed

Saxena, Shekhar; Sharan, Pratap; Saraceno, Benedetto

2003-09-01

Very little information is available on budget and financing of mental health services in the world. During year 2001, WHO collected information from all countries on resources available for mental health care as a part of Project Atlas. The present report seeks to describe the situation regarding federal budgets and financing of mental health care at the country level. It also examines the association between relative allocation of health budget to mental health and mental health policy, programme and resource indicators in 89 countries. The information was collected through a questionnaire (with an accompanying glossary) that was sent to the mental health focal point in the Ministry of Health of each country. Eighty nine countries provided information on their mental health budget as a proportion of health budget. In addition, information was obtained on policy, programme and mental health resource indicators (beds, personnel, services to special population and availability of drugs). The results showed that 32% of 191 countries did not have a specified budget for mental health. Of the 89 countries that supplied the requisite information 36% spent less than 1% of their total health budget on mental health. Many countries from Africa (79%) and the South East Asia (63%) were in this subgroup. Comparison with the Global Burden of Disease data showed a marked disparity between burden and resources. Lower income countries allocated a lesser proportion of their health budget on mental health in comparison to higher income countries. The primary method of financing mental health care in most countries was tax-based (60.2%), but many low-income countries depended on out-of-pocket expenditure (16.4%). The presence of mental health policies and programmes in general was not associated with the proportion of health budget allocated to mental health. Counties categorized based on the proportion of mental health budget to health budget, differed significantly in terms of policy on disability benefits and mental health resource indicators (beds, personnel, services for special populations and availability of drugs). Federal allocation for mental health care in most countries is low compared to the burden of these disorders. There is also a large disparity among countries and regions. Limitations of the study were, an exclusive reliance on government sources and the difficulty some governments faced in providing accurate information on federal mental health budget as it was not identified separately. To use resources more efficiently and judiciously, countries should support integration of services, reallocation of mental health beds, training in mental health to providers and services for special populations. Most countries need to increase their mental health budgets in order to provide necessary services. Countries with out-of-pocket payment as the primary method of mental health financing should seek to establish social insurance mechanisms. More research needs to be conducted to gather specific information on mental health financing in relation to policy and service planning.

PRACTICAL: Planning and Resource Allocation in C2-Domains With Time Critical Algorithms (PRACTICAL: Planning en Allocatie in C2-Domeinen Met Tijdkritische Algoritmen)

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-02-01

the (re)planning framework, incorporating the demonstrators CALIGULA and ALLOCATOR for resource allocation and scheduling respectively. In the Command...demonstrator CALIGULA for the problem of allocating frequencies to a radio link network. The problems in the domain of scheduling are dealt with. which has...demonstrating the (re)planning framework, incorporating the demonstrators CALIGULA and ALLOCATOR for resource allocation and scheduling respectively

The Impact of Implementing New Information Systems on the Priorities, Management, and Allocation of Resources at Colleges and Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hossler, Don

2006-01-01

The hidden dimensions of leadership and of the costs associated with the implementation of new information systems should be carefully considered. They can help determine the short- and long-term success of new systems.

Improving Navy Recruiting with the New Planned Resource Optimization Model With Experimental Design (PROM-WED)

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-03-01

RECRUITING WITH THE NEW PLANNED RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION MODEL WITH EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN (PROM-WED) by Allison R. Hogarth March 2017 Thesis...with the New Planned Resource Optimization Model With Experimental Design (PROM-WED) 5. FUNDING NUMBERS 6. AUTHOR(S) Allison R. Hogarth 7. PERFORMING...has historically used a non -linear optimization model, the Planned Resource Optimization (PRO) model, to help inform decisions on the allocation of

Unregulated drinking water initiative for environmental surveillance and public health.

PubMed

Backer, Lorraine C; Tosta, Nancy

2011-03-01

The critical public health need to assess and protect the drinking water used by 37 million Americans requires attention and resources. NCEH, in partnership with states, has begun the process to identify information available on unregulated drinking water sources to improve the availability of data to support decisive public health actions and resource allocation. Far more attention and resources are needed to complete this process.

Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) 11: reporting outcomes of an evidence-driven approach to disinvestment in a local healthcare setting.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Allen, Kelly; Ramsey, Wayne; King, Richard; Green, Sally

2018-05-30

This is the final paper in a thematic series reporting a program of Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. The SHARE Program was established to explore a systematic, integrated, evidence-based organisation-wide approach to disinvestment in a large Australian health service network. This paper summarises the findings, discusses the contribution of the SHARE Program to the body of knowledge and understanding of disinvestment in the local healthcare setting, and considers implications for policy, practice and research. The SHARE program was conducted in three phases. Phase One was undertaken to understand concepts and practices related to disinvestment and the implications for a local health service and, based on this information, to identify potential settings and methods for decision-making about disinvestment. The aim of Phase Two was to implement and evaluate the proposed methods to determine which were sustainable, effective and appropriate in a local health service. A review of the current literature incorporating the SHARE findings was conducted in Phase Three to contribute to the understanding of systematic approaches to disinvestment in the local healthcare context. SHARE differed from many other published examples of disinvestment in several ways: by seeking to identify and implement disinvestment opportunities within organisational infrastructure rather than as standalone projects; considering disinvestment in the context of all resource allocation decisions rather than in isolation; including allocation of non-monetary resources as well as financial decisions; and focusing on effective use of limited resources to optimise healthcare outcomes. The SHARE findings provide a rich source of new information about local health service decision-making, in a level of detail not previously reported, to inform others in similar situations. Multiple innovations related to disinvestment were found to be acceptable and feasible in the local setting. Factors influencing decision-making, implementation processes and final outcomes were identified; and methods for further exploration, or avoidance, in attempting disinvestment in this context are proposed based on these findings. The settings, frameworks, models, methods and tools arising from the SHARE findings have potential to enhance health care and patient outcomes.

Data Systems Linking Resources to Actions and Outcomes: One of the Nation's Most Pressing Education Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guthrie, James W.

2007-01-01

The inadequacy of present-day public school financial and performance reporting restricts policymakers. With existing spending and activity information now generally available, public officials can determine only overall education resource levels and make allocative decisions only among gross input categories such as relative amounts of labor and…

10 CFR 2.348 - Separation of functions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... allocation of agency resources; or (iv) General regulatory, scientific, or engineering principles that are... decision that clearly and concisely sets forth the information or argument relied on to show the contrary...

10 CFR 2.348 - Separation of functions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... allocation of agency resources; or (iv) General regulatory, scientific, or engineering principles that are... decision that clearly and concisely sets forth the information or argument relied on to show the contrary...

Selective Attention with Separable Stimuli Using a Speeded Task.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kolbet, Lori L.; Garvey, Jackie

The ability to allocate attentional resources to relevant aspects of a stimulus event is a critical skill needed for efficient information processing. Evidence suggests that this ability to focus on relevant information without interference is dependent on the nature of the stimulus structure of the information to be processed. To test the…

Prioritizing Information Technology Investments: Assessing the Correlations among Technological Readiness, Information Technology Flexibility, and Information Technology Effectiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walter, John T.

2010-01-01

Management's dilemma, when allocating financial resources towards the improvement of technological readiness and IT flexibility within their organizations, is to control financial risk and maximize IT effectiveness. Technological readiness is people's propensity to embrace and use technology. Its drivers are optimism, innovativeness, discomfort,…

Examination of Resource Allocation in Education: Connecting Spending to Student Performance. Research Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Diane; Rudo, Zena H.; Schneider, Cynthia L.; Smith-Hansen, Lotte

This document reports on a study on the relationship between resources and student performance. The study examined district-level patterns of resource allocation, district and school resource practices implemented to improve student performance, and barriers and challenges to efficient resource allocation faced by districts and schools. The study…

A data-driven allocation tool for in-kind resources distributed by a state health department.

PubMed

Peterson, Cora; Kegler, Scott R; Parker, Wende R; Sullivan, David

2016-10-02

The objective of this study was to leverage a state health department's operational data to allocate in-kind resources (children's car seats) to counties, with the proposition that need-based allocation could ultimately improve public health outcomes. This study used a retrospective analysis of administrative data on car seats distributed to counties statewide by the Georgia Department of Public Health and development of a need-based allocation tool (presented as interactive supplemental digital content, adaptable to other types of in-kind public health resources) that relies on current county-level injury and sociodemographic data. Car seat allocation using public health data and a need-based formula resulted in substantially different recommended allocations to individual counties compared to historic distribution. Results indicate that making an in-kind public health resource like car seats universally available results in a less equitable distribution of that resource compared to deliberate allocation according to public health need. Public health agencies can use local data to allocate in-kind resources consistent with health objectives; that is, in a manner offering the greatest potential health impact. Future analysis can determine whether the change to a more equitable allocation of resources is also more efficient, resulting in measurably improved public health outcomes.

Using costing as a district planning and management tool in Balochistan, Pakistan.

PubMed

Green, A; Ali, B; Naeem, A; Vassall, A

2001-06-01

This paper reports on two studies in the province of Balochistan, Pakistan, analyzing the costs of primary care facilities and district and divisional hospitals. There are no known previous cost studies within Balochistan and the information gained is a critical element in developing a more rational allocation of resources within the health sector. The results demonstrate both the high level of under-funding of primary care within the health sector and the current inefficiency of allocation towards primary care and, within budgets, between different line items. Medicines in particular are significantly under-funded at the expense of staffing costs. The results are of use in developing more bottom-up budgeting systems within a more rational resource allocation system that is being developed as an element of the more decentralized health system towards which the province is working.

Productivity and patient satisfaction in primary care--conflicting or compatible goals?

PubMed

Glenngård, Anna Häger

2013-07-01

Following recent reforms in Swedish primary care, providers are accountable to both citizens and county councils, in their role as payers. Productivity and quality measurement is fundamental for ensuring health care providers accountability to payers and that resources are spent as intended. The purpose was to study productivity and patient satisfaction in Swedish primary care. One measure of productivity capturing volume of visits and one measure capturing individual's judgment about the quality of services in relation to allocated resources was estimated. The potential conflict between the two measures and variation with respect to different factors was analyzed. There was a great variation in both measures of productivity. No conflict between the two measures of productivity was found. Thus, most providers could increase their volume of services without adverse effects for the quality and vice versa. Providers are however faced with different conditions. Traditional productivity measures are not enough to assess whether allocated resources are used according to set priorities and generates value for money. Information about the length and content of visits and the distribution of services produced is also needed, in particular to assess if resources allocated based on expected great needs among certain groups actually benefits those individuals. Effects of services produced are also needed. This is particularly important to assess if resources allocated based on expected great needs among certain groups actually benefits those individuals. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Diversifying natural resources value measurements: The Trinity River study

USGS Publications Warehouse

Taylor, J.G.; Douglas, A.J.

1999-01-01

An interdisciplinary team set out to establish the economic and social values of the Trinity River in northern California. This information was intended to support the Secretary of the Interior's decision on allocation of Trinity River flows. This team set out to measure the values of Trinity River flows, fishery resources, and recreation amenities in several different ways. A survey was mailed to users of the Trinity River. This single instrument included economic measures (willingness-to-pay and costs incurred in visiting) and social-psychological measures (importance, satisfaction, and water allocation preferences). A closely related survey measured several of these same values among west coast regional households. The results of these surveys were compiled, and the measured economic and social values were compared. We found that integrating economic and social value information provides a greater depth of understanding of the resource's value. In addition, this integration provides a more in-depth understanding through the quantitative and qualitative results that emerge.

Information and communication technology needs for distributed communication and coordination during expedition-class spaceflight.

PubMed

Caldwell, B S

2000-09-01

AO-lU. Expedition-class missions are distinct from historical human presence in space in ways that significantly affect information flow and information technology designs for such missions. The centrality of Mission Control in these missions is challenged by the distances, associated communication delays, and durations of expeditions, all of which require crews to have more local resources available to manage on-board situations. The author's current research investigates how ground controllers effectively allocate communications bandwidth, cognitive resources, and knowledge sharing skills during time critical routine and non-routine situations. The research focus is on team-based information and communication technology (ICT) use to provide recommendations for improvements to support adaptive bandwidth allocations and improved sharing of data and knowledge in Mission Control contexts. In order to further improve communication and coordination between controllers and crew, additional ICT support resources will be needed to provide shared context knowledge and dynamic assessment of costs and benefits for accessing local information vs. remote expertise. Crew members will have critical needs to understand the goals, intentions, and situational constraints associated with mission information resources in order to use them most effectively in conditions where ground-based expertise is insufficient or requires more time to access and coordinate than local task demands permit. Results of this research will serve to improve the design and implementation of ICT systems to improve human performance capabilities and system operating tolerances for exploration missions. (Specific research data were not available at the time of publication.)

STAR--people-powered prioritization: a 21st-century solution to allocation headaches.

PubMed

Airoldi, Mara; Morton, Alec; Smith, Jenifer A E; Bevan, Gwyn

2014-11-01

The aim of cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) is to inform the allocation of scarce resources. CEA is routinely used in assessing the cost-effectiveness of specific health technologies by agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales. But there is extensive evidence that because of barriers of accessibility and acceptability, CEA has not been used by local health planners in their annual task of allocating fixed budgets to a wide range of types of health care. This paper argues that these planners can use Socio Technical Allocation of Resources (STAR) for that task. STAR builds on the principles of CEA and the practice of program budgeting and marginal analysis. STAR uses requisite models to assess the cost-effectiveness of all interventions considered for resource reallocation by explicitly applying the theory of health economics to evidence of scale, costs, and benefits, with deliberation facilitated through an interactive social process of engaging key stakeholders. In that social process, the stakeholders generate missing estimates of scale, costs, and benefits of the interventions; develop visual models of their relative cost-effectiveness; and interpret the results. We demonstrate the feasibility of STAR by showing how it was used by a local health planning agency of the English National Health Service, the Isle of Wight Primary Care Trust, to allocate a fixed budget in 2008 and 2009. © The Author(s) 2014.

Radar coordination and resource management in a distributed sensor network using emergent control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weir, B. S.; Sokol, T. M.

2009-05-01

As the list of anti-air warfare and ballistic missile defense missions grows, there is an increasing need to coordinate and optimize usage of radar resources across the netted force. Early attempts at this optimization involved top-down control mechanisms whereby sensors accept resource tasking orders from networked tracking elements. These approaches rely heavily on uncertain knowledge of sensor constraints and capabilities. Furthermore, advanced sensor systems may support self-defense missions of the host platform and are therefore unable to relinquish control to an external function. To surmount these issues, the use of bottom-up emergent control techniques is proposed. The information necessary to make quality, network-wide resource allocations is readily available to sensor nodes with access to a netted track picture. By assessing resource priorities relative to the network (versus local) track picture, sensors can understand the contribution of their resources to the netted force. This allows the sensors to apply resources where most needed and remove waste. Furthermore, simple local rules for resource usage, when properly constructed, allow sensors to obtain a globally optimal resource allocation without direct coordination (emergence). These results are robust to partial implementation (i.e., not all nodes upgraded at once) and failures on individual nodes (whether from casualty or reallocation to other sensor missions), and they leave resource control decisions in the hands of the sensor systems instead of an external function. This paper presents independent research and development work on emergent control of sensor resources and the impact to resource allocation and tracking performance.

Economic evaluation of mental health interventions: an introduction to cost-utility analysis.

PubMed

Luyten, Jeroen; Naci, Huseyin; Knapp, Martin

2016-05-01

Finite resources need to be allocated over an ever-increasing range of competing health policies and interventions. Economic evaluation has been developed as a methodology to inform decision makers on the efficiency of particular resource allocations. In this paper we summarize cost-utility analysis, one of the most widely-used forms of economic evaluation in healthcare. We discuss its main elements, interpretation, limitations and relevance to the domain of mental health. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Assessment of nursing management and utilization of nursing resources with the RAFAELA patient classification system--case study from the general wards of one central hospital.

PubMed

Rainio, Anna-Kaisa; Ohinmaa, Arto E

2005-07-01

RAFAELA is a new Finnish PCS, which is used in several University Hospitals and Central Hospitals and has aroused considerable interest in hospitals in Europe. The aim of the research is firstly to assess the feasibility of the RAFAELA Patient Classification System (PCS) in nursing staff management and, secondly, whether it can be seen as the transferring of nursing resources between wards according to the information received from nursing care intensity classification. The material was received from the Central Hospital's 12 general wards between 2000 and 2001. The RAFAELA PCS consists of three different measures: a system measuring patient care intensity, a system recording daily nursing resources, and a system measuring the optimal nursing care intensity/nurse situation. The data were analysed in proportion to the labour costs of nursing work and, from that, we calculated the employer's loss (a situation below the optimal level) and savings (a situation above the optimal level) per ward as both costs and the number of nurses. In 2000 the wards had on average 77 days below the optimal level and 106 days above it. In 2001 the wards had on average 71 days below the optimal level and 129 above it. Converting all these days to monetary and personnel resources the employer lost 307,745 or 9.84 nurses and saved 369,080 or 11.80 nurses in total in 2000. In 2001 the employer lost in total 242,143 or 7.58 nurses and saved 457,615 or 14.32 nurses. During the time period of the research nursing resources seemed not have been transferred between wards. RAFAELA PCS is applicable to the allocation of nursing resources but its possibilities have not been entirely used in the researched hospital. The management of nursing work should actively use the information received in nursing care intensity classification and plan and implement the transferring of nursing resources in order to ensure the quality of patient care. Information on which units resources should be allocated to is needed in the planning of staff resources of the whole hospital. More resources do not solve the managerial problem of the right allocation of resources. If resources are placed wrongly, the problems of daily staff management and cost control continue.

Nanoscale molecular communication networks: a game-theoretic perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Chunxiao; Chen, Yan; Ray Liu, K. J.

2015-12-01

Currently, communication between nanomachines is an important topic for the development of novel devices. To implement a nanocommunication system, diffusion-based molecular communication is considered as a promising bio-inspired approach. Various technical issues about molecular communications, including channel capacity, noise and interference, and modulation and coding, have been studied in the literature, while the resource allocation problem among multiple nanomachines has not been well investigated, which is a very important issue since all the nanomachines share the same propagation medium. Considering the limited computation capability of nanomachines and the expensive information exchange cost among them, in this paper, we propose a game-theoretic framework for distributed resource allocation in nanoscale molecular communication systems. We first analyze the inter-symbol and inter-user interference, as well as bit error rate performance, in the molecular communication system. Based on the interference analysis, we formulate the resource allocation problem as a non-cooperative molecule emission control game, where the Nash equilibrium is found and proved to be unique. In order to improve the system efficiency while guaranteeing fairness, we further model the resource allocation problem using a cooperative game based on the Nash bargaining solution, which is proved to be proportionally fair. Simulation results show that the Nash bargaining solution can effectively ensure fairness among multiple nanomachines while achieving comparable social welfare performance with the centralized scheme.

Development of a conceptual integrated traffic safety problem identification database

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1999-12-01

The project conceptualized a traffic safety risk management information system and statistical database for improved problem-driver identification, countermeasure development, and resource allocation. The California Department of Motor Vehicles Drive...

Vaccines: from valuation to resource allocation.

PubMed

Bloom, David E; Madhavan, Guruprasad

2015-06-08

This review focuses on selected challenges and opportunities concerning broader valuation of vaccines and immunization. The challenges involve conceptualizing and measuring the value of vaccines, while the opportunities relate to the strategic and systematic use of that information in health policy decisions that range from the adoption of particular vaccines in national immunization plans to the allocation of resources to vaccine research, development, and delivery. Clarifying the demonstrable individual, family, and community-level benefits of vaccines will allow the public health community to make better-informed and more meaningful comparisons of the costs of vaccines in relation to their full benefits. Taking advantage of this opportunity will require enhanced data collection and the development of strategic planning tools for transparently assessing trade-offs among the myriad attributes of different vaccines in various social and economic contexts. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Web-based graphical user interface for evidence-based decision making for health care allocations in rural areas

PubMed Central

Schuurman, Nadine; Leight, Margo; Berube, Myriam

2008-01-01

Background The creation of successful health policy and location of resources increasingly relies on evidence-based decision-making. The development of intuitive, accessible tools to analyse, display and disseminate spatial data potentially provides the basis for sound policy and resource allocation decisions. As health services are rationalized, the development of tools such graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is especially valuable at they assist decision makers in allocating resources such that the maximum number of people are served. GIS can used to develop GUIs that enable spatial decision making. Results We have created a Web-based GUI (wGUI) to assist health policy makers and administrators in the Canadian province of British Columbia make well-informed decisions about the location and allocation of time-sensitive service capacities in rural regions of the province. This tool integrates datasets for existing hospitals and services, regional populations and road networks to allow users to ascertain the percentage of population in any given service catchment who are served by a specific health service, or baskets of linked services. The wGUI allows policy makers to map trauma and obstetric services against rural populations within pre-specified travel distances, illustrating service capacity by region. Conclusion The wGUI can be used by health policy makers and administrators with little or no formal GIS training to visualize multiple health resource allocation scenarios. The GUI is poised to become a critical decision-making tool especially as evidence is increasingly required for distribution of health services. PMID:18793428

Concept for a Wireless Sensor Network to support GIS based water and land resource management in the Aksu-Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Doluschitz, Reiner; Feike, Til

2013-04-01

Farmers in the oases along the Aksu-Tarim River suffer from severe seasonal water shortage caused by high fluctuations of river run-off. The uncertainty of water availability makes the planning of crop production and related investments extremely difficult. As a consequence farm management is often sub-optimal, manifesting in low input efficiencies, and the value generated in the agricultural sector being way below its potential. The "Tarim Basin Water Resource Bureau" (TBWRB) was founded in the 1990s. Its major task is to implement a basin wide water resources management plan, which involves fair allocation of water resources among the farmers in the different administrative units along the river. Among others, the lack of reliable and timely information on water quantities and qualities within the major water bodies of the basin hinders the implementation of an effective water management plan. Therefore we introduce the concept of a wireless sensor network (WSN) that provides reliable instantaneous information on the status of all important water resources within the basin. In the first step a GIS including all vital geospatial data, like river courses, channel and reservoir network and capacities, soil and land use map, is built. In the second step a WSN that monitors all important parameters at essential positions throughout the basin needs to be established. Measured parameters comprise meteorological data, river run-off, water levels of reservoirs, groundwater levels, and salinity levels of water resources. All data is centrally collected and processed by the TBWRB. Apart from generating a prompt and complete picture of currently available water resources, the TBWRB can use the system to record actual water allocation, and develop an early warning system for upcoming droughts or floods. Finally an integrated water and land management scheme can be established that allocates resources maximizing the benefits at basin level. Financed by public funding, the data collected by the WSN should be accessible to the public. Considering the environmental, economic and social cost of inefficient, intransparent and unfair allocation of water resources, the investments into a WSN are reasonable. However, it requires strong efforts from highest governmental agencies to enable the TBWRB to compile all the required data (e.g. meteorological, soil, river run-off), which is customarily collected and controlled by the respective administrative unit.

Complex Genetic Effects on Early Vegetative Development Shape Resource Allocation Differences Between Arabidopsis lyrata Populations

PubMed Central

Remington, David L.; Leinonen, Päivi H.; Leppälä, Johanna; Savolainen, Outi

2013-01-01

Costs of reproduction due to resource allocation trade-offs have long been recognized as key forces in life history evolution, but little is known about their functional or genetic basis. Arabidopsis lyrata, a perennial relative of the annual model plant A. thaliana with a wide climatic distribution, has populations that are strongly diverged in resource allocation. In this study, we evaluated the genetic and functional basis for variation in resource allocation in a reciprocal transplant experiment, using four A. lyrata populations and F2 progeny from a cross between North Carolina (NC) and Norway parents, which had the most divergent resource allocation patterns. Local alleles at quantitative trait loci (QTL) at a North Carolina field site increased reproductive output while reducing vegetative growth. These QTL had little overlap with flowering date QTL. Structural equation models incorporating QTL genotypes and traits indicated that resource allocation differences result primarily from QTL effects on early vegetative growth patterns, with cascading effects on later vegetative and reproductive development. At a Norway field site, North Carolina alleles at some of the same QTL regions reduced survival and reproductive output components, but these effects were not associated with resource allocation trade-offs in the Norway environment. Our results indicate that resource allocation in perennial plants may involve important adaptive mechanisms largely independent of flowering time. Moreover, the contributions of resource allocation QTL to local adaptation appear to result from their effects on developmental timing and its interaction with environmental constraints, and not from simple models of reproductive costs. PMID:23979581

S4HARA: System for HIV/AIDS resource allocation.

PubMed

Lasry, Arielle; Carter, Michael W; Zaric, Gregory S

2008-03-26

HIV/AIDS resource allocation decisions are influenced by political, social, ethical and other factors that are difficult to quantify. Consequently, quantitative models of HIV/AIDS resource allocation have had limited impact on actual spending decisions. We propose a decision-support System for HIV/AIDS Resource Allocation (S4HARA) that takes into consideration both principles of efficient resource allocation and the role of non-quantifiable influences on the decision-making process for resource allocation. S4HARA is a four-step spreadsheet-based model. The first step serves to identify the factors currently influencing HIV/AIDS allocation decisions. The second step consists of prioritizing HIV/AIDS interventions. The third step involves allocating the budget to the HIV/AIDS interventions using a rational approach. Decision-makers can select from several rational models of resource allocation depending on availability of data and level of complexity. The last step combines the results of the first and third steps to highlight the influencing factors that act as barriers or facilitators to the results suggested by the rational resource allocation approach. Actionable recommendations are then made to improve the allocation. We illustrate S4HARA in the context of a primary healthcare clinic in South Africa. The clinic offers six types of HIV/AIDS interventions and spends US$750,000 annually on these programs. Current allocation decisions are influenced by donors, NGOs and the government as well as by ethical and religious factors. Without additional funding, an optimal allocation of the total budget suggests that the portion allotted to condom distribution be increased from 1% to 15% and the portion allotted to prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections be increased from 43% to 71%, while allocation to other interventions should decrease. Condom uptake at the clinic should be increased by changing the condom distribution policy from a pull system to a push system. NGOs and donors promoting antiretroviral programs at the clinic should be sensitized to the results of the model and urged to invest in wellness programs aimed at the prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections. S4HARA differentiates itself from other decision support tools by providing rational HIV/AIDS resource allocation capabilities as well as consideration of the realities facing authorities in their decision-making process.

Numbers Are Not Enough. Why e-Learning Analytics Failed to Inform an Institutional Strategic Plan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macfadyen, Leah P.; Dawson, Shane

2012-01-01

Learning analytics offers higher education valuable insights that can inform strategic decision-making regarding resource allocation for educational excellence. Research demonstrates that learning management systems (LMSs) can increase student sense of community, support learning communities and enhance student engagement and success, and LMSs…

75 FR 82032 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-29

... DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Health Resources and Services Administration Agency... Administration's HIV/AIDS Bureau to track spending requirements for each program as outlined in the legislation... the types of information that are collected. However, the first report would track the allocation of...

Cost Accounting and Accountability for Early Education Programs for Handicapped Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gingold, William

The paper offers some basic information for making decisions about allocating and accounting for resources provided to young handicapped children. Sections address the following topics: reasons for costing, audiences for cost accounting and accountability information, and a process for cost accounting and accountability (defining cost categories,…

Funding Survey. SY 89/90.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Townsend, Catherine M.

This two-part report presents the results of a budget and funding sources survey of South Carolina library media center programs. In Part 1, survey results are presented for demographic information, staffing information, funding sources, funding amounts from specific sources, allocation of resources, and categories of expenditures. In Part 2, the…

On the Efficient Allocation of Resources for Hypothesis Evaluation in Machine Learning: A Statistical Approach

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chien, S.; Gratch, J.; Burl, M.

1994-01-01

In this report we consider a decision-making problem of selecting a strategy from a set of alternatives on the basis of incomplete information (e.g., a finite number of observations): the system can, however, gather additional information at some cost.

The role of the landscape architect in applied forest landscape management: a case study on process

Treesearch

Wayne Tlusty

1979-01-01

Land planning allocations are often multi-resource concepts, with visual quality objectives addressing the appropriate level of visual resource management. Current legislation and/or regulations often require interdisciplinary teams to implement planning decisions. A considerable amount of information is currently avail-able on visual assessment techniques both for...

Finding the Return on Investment: A Framework for Monitoring Local Child Welfare Agencies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wulczyn, Fred H.; Orlebeke, Britany; Haight, Jennifer

2009-01-01

From year to year, child welfare directors allocate resources in the hope that their efforts will improve children's outcomes. Recently, with the help of the federal government, states have invested significant resources in the sort of information technology needed to run a smarter, more accountable child welfare system. In addition, science has…

An Optimization Framework for Dynamic, Distributed Real-Time Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eckert, Klaus; Juedes, David; Welch, Lonnie; Chelberg, David; Bruggerman, Carl; Drews, Frank; Fleeman, David; Parrott, David; Pfarr, Barbara

2003-01-01

Abstract. This paper presents a model that is useful for developing resource allocation algorithms for distributed real-time systems .that operate in dynamic environments. Interesting aspects of the model include dynamic environments, utility and service levels, which provide a means for graceful degradation in resource-constrained situations and support optimization of the allocation of resources. The paper also provides an allocation algorithm that illustrates how to use the model for producing feasible, optimal resource allocations.

Rate Adaptive Based Resource Allocation with Proportional Fairness Constraints in OFDMA Systems

PubMed Central

Yin, Zhendong; Zhuang, Shufeng; Wu, Zhilu; Ma, Bo

2015-01-01

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), which is widely used in the wireless sensor networks, allows different users to obtain different subcarriers according to their subchannel gains. Therefore, how to assign subcarriers and power to different users to achieve a high system sum rate is an important research area in OFDMA systems. In this paper, the focus of study is on the rate adaptive (RA) based resource allocation with proportional fairness constraints. Since the resource allocation is a NP-hard and non-convex optimization problem, a new efficient resource allocation algorithm ACO-SPA is proposed, which combines ant colony optimization (ACO) and suboptimal power allocation (SPA). To reduce the computational complexity, the optimization problem of resource allocation in OFDMA systems is separated into two steps. For the first one, the ant colony optimization algorithm is performed to solve the subcarrier allocation. Then, the suboptimal power allocation algorithm is developed with strict proportional fairness, and the algorithm is based on the principle that the sums of power and the reciprocal of channel-to-noise ratio for each user in different subchannels are equal. To support it, plenty of simulation results are presented. In contrast with root-finding and linear methods, the proposed method provides better performance in solving the proportional resource allocation problem in OFDMA systems. PMID:26426016

Resource allocation within the National AIDS Control Program of Pakistan: a qualitative assessment of decision maker's opinions.

PubMed

Husain, Sara; Kadir, Masood; Fatmi, Zafar

2007-01-23

Limited resources, whether public or private, demand prioritisation among competing needs to maximise productivity. With a substantial increase in the number of reported HIV cases, little work has been done to understand how resources have been distributed and what factors may have influenced allocation within the newly introduced Enhanced National AIDS Control Program of Pakistan. The objective of this study was to identify perceptions of decision makers about the process of resource allocation within Pakistan's Enhanced National AIDS Control Program. A qualitative study was undertaken and in-depth interviews of decision makers at provincial and federal levels responsible to allocate resources within the program were conducted. HIV was not considered a priority issue by all study participants and external funding for the program was thought to have been accepted because of poor foreign currency reserves and donor agency influence rather than local need. Political influences from the federal government and donor agencies were thought to manipulate distribution of funds within the program. These influences were thought to occur despite the existence of a well-laid out procedure to determine allocation of public resources. Lack of collaboration among departments involved in decision making, a pervasive lack of technical expertise, paucity of information and an atmosphere of ad hoc decision making were thought to reduce resistance to external pressures. Development of a unified program vision through a consultative process and advocacy is necessary to understand goals to be achieved, to enhance program ownership and develop consensus about how money and effort should be directed. Enhancing public sector expertise in planning and budgeting is essential not just for the program, but also to reduce reliance on external agencies for technical support. Strengthening available databases for effective decision making is required to make financial allocations based on real, rather than perceived needs. With a large part of HIV program funding dedicated to public-private partnerships, it becomes imperative to develop public sector capacity to administer contracts, coordinate and monitor activities of the non-governmental sector.

Resource allocation within the National AIDS Control Program of Pakistan: a qualitative assessment of decision maker's opinions

PubMed Central

Husain, Sara; Kadir, Masood; Fatmi, Zafar

2007-01-01

Background Limited resources, whether public or private, demand prioritisation among competing needs to maximise productivity. With a substantial increase in the number of reported HIV cases, little work has been done to understand how resources have been distributed and what factors may have influenced allocation within the newly introduced Enhanced National AIDS Control Program of Pakistan. The objective of this study was to identify perceptions of decision makers about the process of resource allocation within Pakistan's Enhanced National AIDS Control Program. Methods A qualitative study was undertaken and in-depth interviews of decision makers at provincial and federal levels responsible to allocate resources within the program were conducted. Results HIV was not considered a priority issue by all study participants and external funding for the program was thought to have been accepted because of poor foreign currency reserves and donor agency influence rather than local need. Political influences from the federal government and donor agencies were thought to manipulate distribution of funds within the program. These influences were thought to occur despite the existence of a well-laid out procedure to determine allocation of public resources. Lack of collaboration among departments involved in decision making, a pervasive lack of technical expertise, paucity of information and an atmosphere of ad hoc decision making were thought to reduce resistance to external pressures. Conclusion Development of a unified program vision through a consultative process and advocacy is necessary to understand goals to be achieved, to enhance program ownership and develop consensus about how money and effort should be directed. Enhancing public sector expertise in planning and budgeting is essential not just for the program, but also to reduce reliance on external agencies for technical support. Strengthening available databases for effective decision making is required to make financial allocations based on real, rather than perceived needs. With a large part of HIV program funding dedicated to public-private partnerships, it becomes imperative to develop public sector capacity to administer contracts, coordinate and monitor activities of the non-governmental sector. PMID:17244371

Resource Allocation in Public Research Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santos, Jose L.

2007-01-01

The purpose of this study was to conduct an econometric analysis of internal resource allocation. Two theories are used for this study of resource allocation in public research universities, and these are: (1) Theory of the Firm; and (2) Resource Dependence Theory. This study used the American Association of Universities Data Exchange (AAUDE)…

Biomass Allocation of Stoloniferous and Rhizomatous Plant in Response to Resource Availability: A Phylogenetic Meta-Analysis

PubMed Central

Xie, Xiu-Fang; Hu, Yu-Kun; Pan, Xu; Liu, Feng-Hong; Song, Yao-Bin; Dong, Ming

2016-01-01

Resource allocation to different functions is central in life-history theory. Plasticity of functional traits allows clonal plants to regulate their resource allocation to meet changing environments. In this study, biomass allocation traits of clonal plants were categorized into absolute biomass for vegetative growth vs. for reproduction, and their relative ratios based on a data set including 115 species and derived from 139 published literatures. We examined general pattern of biomass allocation of clonal plants in response to availabilities of resource (e.g., light, nutrients, and water) using phylogenetic meta-analysis. We also tested whether the pattern differed among clonal organ types (stolon vs. rhizome). Overall, we found that stoloniferous plants were more sensitive to light intensity than rhizomatous plants, preferentially allocating biomass to vegetative growth, aboveground part and clonal reproduction under shaded conditions. Under nutrient- and water-poor condition, rhizomatous plants were constrained more by ontogeny than by resource availability, preferentially allocating biomass to belowground part. Biomass allocation between belowground and aboveground part of clonal plants generally supported the optimal allocation theory. No general pattern of trade-off was found between growth and reproduction, and neither between sexual and clonal reproduction. Using phylogenetic meta-analysis can avoid possible confounding effects of phylogeny on the results. Our results shown the optimal allocation theory explained a general trend, which the clonal plants are able to plastically regulate their biomass allocation, to cope with changing resource availability, at least in stoloniferous and rhizomatous plants. PMID:27200071

Children's Evaluations of Resource Allocation in the Context of Group Norms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cooley, Shelby; Killen, Melanie

2015-01-01

This study investigated children's evaluations of peer group members who deviated from group norms about equal and unequal allocation of resources. Children, ages 3.5 to 4 years and 5 to 6 years (N = 73), were asked to evaluate a peer group member who deviated from 1 of 2 group allocation norms: (a) equal allocation of resources, or (b) unequal…

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hussain, Hameed; Malik, Saif Ur Rehman; Hameed, Abdul

An efficient resource allocation is a fundamental requirement in high performance computing (HPC) systems. Many projects are dedicated to large-scale distributed computing systems that have designed and developed resource allocation mechanisms with a variety of architectures and services. In our study, through analysis, a comprehensive survey for describing resource allocation in various HPCs is reported. The aim of the work is to aggregate under a joint framework, the existing solutions for HPC to provide a thorough analysis and characteristics of the resource management and allocation strategies. Resource allocation mechanisms and strategies play a vital role towards the performance improvement ofmore » all the HPCs classifications. Therefore, a comprehensive discussion of widely used resource allocation strategies deployed in HPC environment is required, which is one of the motivations of this survey. Moreover, we have classified the HPC systems into three broad categories, namely: (a) cluster, (b) grid, and (c) cloud systems and define the characteristics of each class by extracting sets of common attributes. All of the aforementioned systems are cataloged into pure software and hybrid/hardware solutions. The system classification is used to identify approaches followed by the implementation of existing resource allocation strategies that are widely presented in the literature.« less

Methodological Variation in Economic Evaluations Conducted in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Information for Reference Case Development

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Information generated from economic evaluation is increasingly being used to inform health resource allocation decisions globally, including in low- and middle- income countries. However, a crucial consideration for users of the information at a policy level, e.g. funding agencies, is whether the studies are comparable, provide sufficient detail to inform policy decision making, and incorporate inputs from data sources that are reliable and relevant to the context. This review was conducted to inform a methodological standardisation workstream at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and assesses BMGF-funded cost-per-DALY economic evaluations in four programme areas (malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and vaccines) in terms of variation in methodology, use of evidence, and quality of reporting. The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in the three areas of assessment, and support the case for the introduction of a standardised methodology or reference case by the BMGF. The findings are also instructive for all institutions that fund economic evaluations in LMICs and who have a desire to improve the ability of economic evaluations to inform resource allocation decisions. PMID:25950443

Distributed Multi-Cell Resource Allocation with Price Based ICI Coordination in Downlink OFDMA Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lv, Gangming; Zhu, Shihua; Hui, Hui

Multi-cell resource allocation under minimum rate request for each user in OFDMA networks is addressed in this paper. Based on Lagrange dual decomposition theory, the joint multi-cell resource allocation problem is decomposed and modeled as a limited-cooperative game, and a distributed multi-cell resource allocation algorithm is thus proposed. Analysis and simulation results show that, compared with non-cooperative iterative water-filling algorithm, the proposed algorithm can remarkably reduce the ICI level and improve overall system performances.

Probabilistic resource allocation system with self-adaptive capability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yufik, Yan M. (Inventor)

1996-01-01

A probabilistic resource allocation system is disclosed containing a low capacity computational module (Short Term Memory or STM) and a self-organizing associative network (Long Term Memory or LTM) where nodes represent elementary resources, terminal end nodes represent goals, and directed links represent the order of resource association in different allocation episodes. Goals and their priorities are indicated by the user, and allocation decisions are made in the STM, while candidate associations of resources are supplied by the LTM based on the association strength (reliability). Reliability values are automatically assigned to the network links based on the frequency and relative success of exercising those links in the previous allocation decisions. Accumulation of allocation history in the form of an associative network in the LTM reduces computational demands on subsequent allocations. For this purpose, the network automatically partitions itself into strongly associated high reliability packets, allowing fast approximate computation and display of allocation solutions satisfying the overall reliability and other user-imposed constraints. System performance improves in time due to modification of network parameters and partitioning criteria based on the performance feedback.

Probabilistic resource allocation system with self-adaptive capability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yufik, Yan M. (Inventor)

1998-01-01

A probabilistic resource allocation system is disclosed containing a low capacity computational module (Short Term Memory or STM) and a self-organizing associative network (Long Term Memory or LTM) where nodes represent elementary resources, terminal end nodes represent goals, and weighted links represent the order of resource association in different allocation episodes. Goals and their priorities are indicated by the user, and allocation decisions are made in the STM, while candidate associations of resources are supplied by the LTM based on the association strength (reliability). Weights are automatically assigned to the network links based on the frequency and relative success of exercising those links in the previous allocation decisions. Accumulation of allocation history in the form of an associative network in the LTM reduces computational demands on subsequent allocations. For this purpose, the network automatically partitions itself into strongly associated high reliability packets, allowing fast approximate computation and display of allocation solutions satisfying the overall reliability and other user-imposed constraints. System performance improves in time due to modification of network parameters and partitioning criteria based on the performance feedback.

Power-efficient distributed resource allocation under goodput QoS constraints for heterogeneous networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andreotti, Riccardo; Del Fiorentino, Paolo; Giannetti, Filippo; Lottici, Vincenzo

2016-12-01

This work proposes a distributed resource allocation (RA) algorithm for packet bit-interleaved coded OFDM transmissions in the uplink of heterogeneous networks (HetNets), characterized by small cells deployed over a macrocell area and sharing the same band. Every user allocates its transmission resources, i.e., bits per active subcarrier, coding rate, and power per subcarrier, to minimize the power consumption while both guaranteeing a target quality of service (QoS) and accounting for the interference inflicted by other users transmitting over the same band. The QoS consists of the number of information bits delivered in error-free packets per unit of time, or goodput (GP), estimated at the transmitter by resorting to an efficient effective SNR mapping technique. First, the RA problem is solved in the point-to-point case, thus deriving an approximate yet accurate closed-form expression for the power allocation (PA). Then, the interference-limited HetNet case is examined, where the RA problem is described as a non-cooperative game, providing a solution in terms of generalized Nash equilibrium. Thanks to the closed-form of the PA, the solution analysis is based on the best response concept. Hence, sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of the solution are analytically derived, along with a distributed algorithm capable of reaching the game equilibrium.

The Method for Assigning Priority Levels (MAPLe): A new decision-support system for allocating home care resources

PubMed Central

Hirdes, John P; Poss, Jeff W; Curtin-Telegdi, Nancy

2008-01-01

Background Home care plays a vital role in many health care systems, but there is evidence that appropriate targeting strategies must be used to allocate limited home care resources effectively. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a methodology for prioritizing access to community and facility-based services for home care clients. Methods Canadian and international data based on the Resident Assessment Instrument – Home Care (RAI-HC) were analyzed to identify predictors for nursing home placement, caregiver distress and for being rated as requiring alternative placement to improve outlook. Results The Method for Assigning Priority Levels (MAPLe) algorithm was a strong predictor of all three outcomes in the derivation sample. The algorithm was validated with additional data from five other countries, three other provinces, and an Ontario sample obtained after the use of the RAI-HC was mandated. Conclusion The MAPLe algorithm provides a psychometrically sound decision-support tool that may be used to inform choices related to allocation of home care resources and prioritization of clients needing community or facility-based services. PMID:18366782

How to allocate limited healthcare resources: Lessons from the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in rural Mozambique

PubMed Central

Dodson, Zan M.; Agadjanian, Victor; Driessen, Julia

2016-01-01

Proper allocation of limited healthcare resources is a challenging task for policymakers in developing countries. Allocation of and access to these resources typically varies based on how need is defined, thus determining how individuals access and acquire healthcare. Using the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in southern Mozambique as an example, we examine alternative definitions of need for rural populations and how they might impact the allocation of this vital health service. Our results show that how need is defined matters when allocating limited healthcare resources and the use of need-based metrics can help ensure more optimal distribution of services. PMID:28596630

Resource Allocation and Public Policy in Alberta's Postsecondary System.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barneston, Bob; Boberg, Alice

2000-01-01

Resource allocation in Alberta's postsecondary system has changed substantially since 1994, designed to reapportion financial responsibility for higher education, increase vocational outcomes of postsecondary education, and increase transfer of knowledge and technology to the private sector. This paper outlines how resource allocation has been…

32 CFR 1901.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC RIGHTS UNDER THE PRIVACY ACT OF 1974 Additional Administrative Matters § 1901.33... imposed on the component by the Director of Central Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information...

32 CFR 1901.33 - Allocation of resources; agreed extensions of time.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PUBLIC RIGHTS UNDER THE PRIVACY ACT OF 1974 Additional Administrative Matters § 1901.33... imposed on the component by the Director of Central Intelligence or otherwise by law, (3) The information...

A centre-free approach for resource allocation with lower bounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Obando, Germán; Quijano, Nicanor; Rakoto-Ravalontsalama, Naly

2017-09-01

Since complexity and scale of systems are continuously increasing, there is a growing interest in developing distributed algorithms that are capable to address information constraints, specially for solving optimisation and decision-making problems. In this paper, we propose a novel method to solve distributed resource allocation problems that include lower bound constraints. The optimisation process is carried out by a set of agents that use a communication network to coordinate their decisions. Convergence and optimality of the method are guaranteed under some mild assumptions related to the convexity of the problem and the connectivity of the underlying graph. Finally, we compare our approach with other techniques reported in the literature, and we present some engineering applications.

Phylogeny determines flower size-dependent sex allocation at flowering in a hermaphroditic family.

PubMed

Teixido, A L; Guzmán, B; Staggemeier, V G; Valladares, F

2017-11-01

In animal-pollinated hermaphroditic plants, optimal floral allocation determines relative investment into sexes, which is ultimately dependent on flower size. Larger flowers disproportionally increase maleness whereas smaller and less rewarding flowers favour female function. Although floral traits are considered strongly conserved, phylogenetic relationships in the interspecific patterns of resource allocation to floral sex remain overlooked. We investigated these patterns in Cistaceae, a hermaphroditic family. We reconstructed phylogenetic relationships among Cistaceae species and quantified phylogenetic signal for flower size, dry mass and nutrient allocation to floral structures in 23 Mediterranean species using Blomberg's K-statistic. Lastly, phylogenetically-controlled correlational and regression analyses were applied to examine flower size-based allometry in resource allocation to floral structures. Sepals received the highest dry mass allocation, followed by petals, whereas sexual structures increased nutrient allocation. Flower size and resource allocation to floral structures, except for carpels, showed a strong phylogenetic signal. Larger-flowered species allometrically allocated more resources to maleness, by increasing allocation to corollas and stamens. Our results suggest a major role of phylogeny in determining interspecific changes in flower size and subsequent floral sex allocation. This implies that flower size balances the male-female function over the evolutionary history of Cistaceae. While allometric resource investment in maleness is inherited across species diversification, allocation to the female function seems a labile trait that varies among closely related species that have diversified into different ecological niches. © 2017 German Botanical Society and The Royal Botanical Society of the Netherlands.

On System Engineering a Barter-Based Re-allocation of Space System Key Development Resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kosmann, William J.

NASA has had a decades-long problem with cost growth during the development of space science missions. Numerous agency-sponsored studies have produced average mission level development cost growths ranging from 23 to 77%. A new study of 26 historical NASA science instrument set developments using expert judgment to re-allocate key development resources has an average cost growth of 73.77%. Twice in history, during the Cassini and EOS-Terra science instrument developments, a barter-based mechanism has been used to re-allocate key development resources. The mean instrument set development cost growth was -1.55%. Performing a bivariate inference on the means of these two distributions, there is statistical evidence to support the claim that using a barter-based mechanism to re-allocate key instrument development resources will result in a lower expected cost growth than using the expert judgment approach. Agent-based discrete event simulation is the natural way to model a trade environment. A NetLogo agent-based barter-based simulation of science instrument development was created. The agent-based model was validated against the Cassini historical example, as the starting and ending instrument development conditions are available. The resulting validated agent-based barter-based science instrument resource re-allocation simulation was used to perform 300 instrument development simulations, using barter to re-allocate development resources. The mean cost growth was -3.365%. A bivariate inference on the means was performed to determine that additional significant statistical evidence exists to support a claim that using barter-based resource re-allocation will result in lower expected cost growth, with respect to the historical expert judgment approach. Barter-based key development resource re-allocation should work on science spacecraft development as well as it has worked on science instrument development. A new study of 28 historical NASA science spacecraft developments has an average cost growth of 46.04%. As barter-based key development resource re-allocation has never been tried in a spacecraft development, no historical results exist, and an inference on the means test is not possible. A simulation of using barter-based resource re-allocation should be developed. The NetLogo instrument development simulation should be modified to account for spacecraft development market participant differences. The resulting agent-based barter-based spacecraft resource re-allocation simulation would then be used to determine if significant statistical evidence exists to prove a claim that using barter-based resource re-allocation will result in lower expected cost growth.

What Factors Do Allied Health Take Into Account When Making Resource Allocation Decisions?

PubMed

Lane, Haylee; Sturgess, Tamica; Philip, Kathleen; Markham, Donna; Martin, Jennifer; Walsh, Jill; Hubbard, Wendy; Haines, Terry

2017-09-12

Allied health comprises multiple professional groups including dietetics, medical radiation practitioners, occupational therapists, optometrists and psychologists. Different to medical and nursing, Allied health are often organized in discipline specific departments and allocate budgets within these to provide services to a range of clinical areas. Little is known of how managers of allied health go about allocating these resources, the factors they consider when making these decisions, and the sources of information they rely upon. The purpose of this study was to identify the key factors that allied health consider when making resource allocation decisions and the sources of information they are based upon. Four forums were conducted each consisting of case studies, a large group discussion and two hypothetical scenarios to elicit data. A thematic content analysis commenced during post-forum discussions of key factors by forum facilitators. These factors were then presented to an expert working party for further discussion and refinement. Transcripts were generated of all data recordings and a detailed thematic analysis was undertaken by one author to ensure coded data matched the initial thematic analysis. Twelve factors affecting the decision-making of allied health managers and clinicians were identified. One of these factors was disendorsed by the expert working party. The 11 remaining factors can be considered to be key decision-making principles that should be consistently applied to resource allocation. These principles were clustered into three overarching themes of readiness, impact and appropriateness. Understanding these principles now means further research can be completed to more effectively integrate research evidence into health policy and service delivery, create partnerships among policy-makers, managers, service providers and researchers, and to provide support to answer difficult questions that policy-makers, managers and service providers face. © 2018 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Human Factors in Aviation Maintenance. Phase 1

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-11-01

Aircraft Maintenance Information SystemSupyyse AMP ......... Aircraft Maintenance Personnel CRM ....... Cockpit Resource Management AMT... developments were sponsored by the Department of interchange of relevant information between system par- Defense (DoD). Fewer than twenty systems are...ofindividuals without complicating lines ofcommand andothers in the maintenance system is repeated for row "I." orthe allocation ofresponsibility

Information for Action: An Advocate's Guide to Using Maternal and Child Health Data.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braveman, Paula; Bennett, Trude

The guide is based on project reports by the San Francisco Department of Public Health to improve and monitor perinatal health and children's health. These reports demonstrated the potential of information to help community advocacy groups, service providers, and program planners identify priorities for policy decisions and resource allocation.…

Sector-Led Improvement in Children's Services: A Lever for Evidence-Informed Practice?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holmes, Dez; Brookes, Carole

2014-01-01

The drive for sector-led improvement within children's services has a more prominent place in improving outcomes for children and young people than ever before. Concurrently, the imperative to access and utilise evidence to inform practice has become increasingly important, enabling scarce resources to be allocated according to "what…

Equity in resource allocation for health: a comparative study of the Ashanti and Northern Regions of Ghana.

PubMed

Asante, Augustine Danso; Zwi, Anthony Barry; Ho, Maria Theresa

2006-10-01

Debate over the equitable allocation of financial resources in the health sector has focused overwhelmingly on allocation from national to regional levels. More equitable allocation of such resources within regions has been virtually ignored, creating a vacuum in knowledge regarding how resources are allocated intra-regionally and their potential influence on promoting health equity. In this paper, we report an empirical study examining progress towards equity in intra-regional resource allocation in the Ashanti and Northern regions of Ghana. Relative deprivation across the 31 districts of the two regions was measured as a proxy of health needs. The result was used to develop an equity-adjusted share index (EAS) applied as a yardstick against which progress towards equity was assessed. The study found a significant correlation between districts' share of donor pooled funds (DPF) and the EAS in the Northern region for three of the 4 years investigated. In Ashanti region, a worsening trend in relation to equity in DPF allocation was discovered. The proportion of variance in the share of DPF that could be explained by the EAS reduced incrementally from 56% in 1999 to less than 1% in 2002. The study highlights the need for more emphasis on intra-regional equity in resource allocation in Ghana.

Resource allocation for mitigating regional air pollution–related mortality: A summertime case study for five cities in the United States

PubMed Central

Liao, Kuo-Jen; Hou, Xiangting; Strickland, Matthew J.

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT An important issue of regional air quality management is to allocate air quality management funds to maximize environmental and human health benefits. In this study, we use an innovative approach to tackle this air quality management issue. We develop an innovative resource allocation model that allows identification of air pollutant emission control strategies that maximize mortality avoidances subject to a resource constraint. We first present the development of the resource allocation model and then a case study to show how the model can be used to identify resource allocation strategies that maximize mortality avoidances for top five Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) (i.e., New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Philadelphia) in the continental United States collectively. Given budget constraints in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Act assessment, the results of the case study suggest that controls of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and primary carbon (PC) emissions from EPA Regions 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9 would have significant health benefits for the five selected cities collectively. Around 30,800 air pollution–related mortalities could be avoided during the selected 2-week summertime episode for the five cities collectively if the budget could be allocated based on the results of the resource allocation model. Although only five U.S. cities during a 2-week episode are considered in the case study, the resource allocation model can be used by decision-makers to plan air pollution mitigation strategies to achieve the most significant health benefits for other seasons and more cities over a region or the continental U.S.Implications: Effective allocations of air quality management resources are challenging and complicated, and it is desired to have a tool that can help decision-makers better allocate the funds to maximize health benefits of air pollution mitigation. An innovative resource allocation model developed in this study can help decision-makers identify the best resource allocation strategies for multiple cities collectively. The results of a case study suggest that controls of primary carbon and sulfur dioxides emissions would achieve the most significant health benefits for five selected cities collectively. PMID:27441782

Emergence of distributed coordination in the Kolkata Paise Restaurant problem with finite information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghosh, Diptesh; Chakrabarti, Anindya S.

2017-10-01

In this paper, we study a large-scale distributed coordination problem and propose efficient adaptive strategies to solve the problem. The basic problem is to allocate finite number of resources to individual agents in the absence of a central planner such that there is as little congestion as possible and the fraction of unutilized resources is reduced as far as possible. In the absence of a central planner and global information, agents can employ adaptive strategies that uses only a finite knowledge about the competitors. In this paper, we show that a combination of finite information sets and reinforcement learning can increase the utilization fraction of resources substantially.

Resource allocation of in vitro fertilization: a nationwide register-based cohort study.

PubMed

Klemetti, Reija; Gissler, Mika; Sevón, Tiina; Hemminki, Elina

2007-12-21

Infertility is common and in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a widely used treatment. In IVF the need increases and the effectiveness and appropriateness decrease by age. The purpose of this study was to describe allocation of resources for IVF by women's age, socioeconomic position, area of residence and treatment sector (public vs. private) and to discuss how fairly the IVF resources are allocated in Finland. Women who received IVF between 1996 and 1998 (N = 9175) were identified from the reimbursement records of the Social Insurance Institution (SII). Information on IVF women's background characteristics came from the Central Population Register and the SII, on treatment costs from IVF clinics and the SII, and on births from the Medical Birth Register. The main outcome measures were success of IVF by number of cycles and treated women, expenditures per IVF cycles, per women, per live-birth, and per treatment sector, and private and public expenditures. Expenditures were estimated from health care visits and costs. During a mean period of 1.5 years, older women (women aged 40 or older) received 1.4 times more IVF treatment cycles than younger women (women aged below 30). The success rate decreased by age: from 22 live births per 100 cycles among younger women to 6 per 100 among older women. The mean cost of a live birth increased by age: compared to younger women, costs per born live birth of older women were 3-fold. Calculated by population, public expenditure was allocated most to young women and women from the highest socioeconomic position. Regional differences were not remarkable. Children of older infertile women involve more expense due to the lower success rates of IVF. Socioeconomic differences suggest unfair resource allocation in Finland.

Resource allocation of in vitro fertilization: a nationwide register-based cohort study

PubMed Central

Klemetti, Reija; Gissler, Mika; Sevón, Tiina; Hemminki, Elina

2007-01-01

Background Infertility is common and in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a widely used treatment. In IVF the need increases and the effectiveness and appropriateness decrease by age. The purpose of this study was to describe allocation of resources for IVF by women's age, socioeconomic position, area of residence and treatment sector (public vs. private) and to discuss how fairly the IVF resources are allocated in Finland. Methods Women who received IVF between 1996 and 1998 (N = 9175) were identified from the reimbursement records of the Social Insurance Institution (SII). Information on IVF women's background characteristics came from the Central Population Register and the SII, on treatment costs from IVF clinics and the SII, and on births from the Medical Birth Register. The main outcome measures were success of IVF by number of cycles and treated women, expenditures per IVF cycles, per women, per live-birth, and per treatment sector, and private and public expenditures. Expenditures were estimated from health care visits and costs. Results During a mean period of 1.5 years, older women (women aged 40 or older) received 1.4 times more IVF treatment cycles than younger women (women aged below 30). The success rate decreased by age: from 22 live births per 100 cycles among younger women to 6 per 100 among older women. The mean cost of a live birth increased by age: compared to younger women, costs per born live birth of older women were 3-fold. Calculated by population, public expenditure was allocated most to young women and women from the highest socioeconomic position. Regional differences were not remarkable. Conclusion Children of older infertile women involve more expense due to the lower success rates of IVF. Socioeconomic differences suggest unfair resource allocation in Finland. PMID:18154645

Evidence-based human resource management: a study of nurse leaders' resource allocation.

PubMed

Fagerström, Lisbeth

2009-05-01

The aims were to illustrate how the RAFAELA system can be used to facilitate evidence-based human resource management. The theoretical framework of the RAFAELA system is based on a holistic view of humankind and a view of leadership founded on human resource management. Nine wards from three central hospitals in Finland participated in the study. The data, stemming from 2006-2007, were taken from the critical indicators (ward-related and nursing intensity information) for national benchmarking used in the RAFAELA system. The data were analysed descriptively. The daily nursing resources per classified patient ratio is a more specific method of measurement than the nurse-to-patient ratio. For four wards, the nursing intensity per nurse surpassed the optimal level 34% to 62.2% of days. Resource allocation was clearly improved in that a better balance between patients' care needs and available nursing resources was maintained. The RAFAELA system provides a rational, systematic and objective foundation for evidence-based human resource management. Data from a systematic use of the RAFAELA system offer objective facts and motives for evidence-based decision making in human resource management, and will therefore enhance the nurse leaders' evidence and scientific based way of working.

Children's understanding of equity in the context of inequality.

PubMed

Rizzo, Michael T; Killen, Melanie

2016-11-01

In the context of a pre-existing resource inequality, the concerns for strict equality (allocating the same number of resources to all recipients) conflict with the concerns for equity (allocating resources to rectify the inequality). This study demonstrated age-related changes in children's (3-8 years old, N = 133) ability to simultaneously weigh the concerns for equality and equity through the analysis of children's judgements, allocations, and reasoning in the context of a pre-existing inequality. Three- to 4-year-olds took equity into account in their judgements of allocations, but allocated resources equally in a behavioural task. In contrast, 5- to 6-year-olds rectified the inequality in their allocations, but judged both equitable and equal allocations to be fair. It was not until 7-8 years old that children focused on rectifying the inequality in their allocations and judgements, as well as judged equal allocations less positively than equitable allocations, thereby demonstrating a more complete understanding of the necessity of rectifying inequalities. The novel findings revealed age-related changes from 3 to 8 years old regarding how the concerns for equity and equality develop, and how children's judgements, allocations, and reasoning are coordinated when making allocation decisions. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Intelligence Level and the Allocation of Resources for Creative Tasks: A Pupillometry Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ojha, Amitash; Indurkhya, Bipin; Lee, Minho

2017-01-01

This pupillometry study examined the relationship between intelligence and creative cognition from the resource allocation perspective. It was hypothesized that, during a creative metaphor task, individuals with higher intelligence scores would have different resource allocation patterns than individuals with lower intelligence scores. The study…

Allocating Resources for Learning Support: A Case Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sharp, Stephen

2000-01-01

Examines how learning-support resources are allocated to Scottish secondary schools, drawing on data from an Edinburgh education authority. Although a rationale for allocating resources based on socioeconomic indices can be constructed, basing decisions on a combination of standardized attainment tests and special-needs audits is preferable.…

Resource Allocation in British Universities. SRHE Monograph 56.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shattock, Michael, Ed.; Rigby, Gwynneth, Ed.

The ways that British universities allocate their resources are discussed, with attention to different styles, techniques, and decison-making structures. Since the purpose is to describe institutional models of resource allocation, specific universities are not identified by name. After identifying the sources of income and the breakdown of…

Resource Allocation in a Repetitive Project Scheduling Using Genetic Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samuel, Biju; Mathew, Jeeno

2018-03-01

Resource Allocation is procedure of doling out or allocating the accessible assets in a monetary way and productive way. Resource allocation is the scheduling of the accessible assets and accessible exercises or activities required while thinking about both the asset accessibility and the total project completion time. Asset provisioning and allocation takes care of that issue by permitting the specialist co-ops to deal with the assets for every individual demand of asset. A probabilistic selection procedure has been developed in order to ensure various selections of chromosomes

Stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness and allocation of resources to mental health services.

PubMed

Corrigan, Patrick W; Watson, Amy C; Warpinski, Amy C; Gracia, Gabriela

2004-08-01

This study tests a social psychological model (Skitka & Tetlock, 1992). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 491-522; [1993]. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 65, 1205-1223 stating that policy maker decisions regarding the allocation of resources to mental health services are influenced by their attitudes towards people with mental illness and treatment efficacy. Fifty four individuals participated in a larger study of education about mental health stigma. Participants completed various measures of resource allocation preferences for mandated treatment and rehabilitation services, attributions about people with mental illness, and factors that influence allocation preferences including perceived treatment efficacy. Results showed significant attitudinal correlates with resource allocation preferences for mandated treatment, but no correlates to rehabilitation services. In particular, people who pity people with mental illness as well as those that endorse coercive and segregated treatments, were more likely to rate resource allocation to mandated care as important. Perceived treatment efficacy was also positively associated with resource allocation preferences for mandated treatment. A separate behavioral measure that involved donating money to NAMI was found to be inversely associated with blaming people for their mental illness and not being willing to help them. Implications of these findings on strategies that seek to increase resources for mental health programs are discussed.

How to get the most bang for your buck: the evolution and physiology of nutrition-dependent resource allocation strategies.

PubMed

Ng'oma, Enoch; Perinchery, Anna M; King, Elizabeth G

2017-06-28

All organisms use resources to grow, survive and reproduce. The supply of these resources varies widely across landscapes and time, imposing ultimate constraints on the maximal trait values for allocation-related traits. In this review, we address three key questions fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of allocation strategies and their underlying mechanisms. First, we ask: how diverse are flexible resource allocation strategies among different organisms? We find there are many, varied, examples of flexible strategies that depend on nutrition. However, this diversity is often ignored in some of the best-known cases of resource allocation shifts, such as the commonly observed pattern of lifespan extension under nutrient limitation. A greater appreciation of the wide variety of flexible allocation strategies leads directly to our second major question: what conditions select for different plastic allocation strategies? Here, we highlight the need for additional models that explicitly consider the evolution of phenotypically plastic allocation strategies and empirical tests of the predictions of those models in natural populations. Finally, we consider the question: what are the underlying mechanisms determining resource allocation strategies? Although evolutionary biologists assume differential allocation of resources is a major factor limiting trait evolution, few proximate mechanisms are known that specifically support the model. We argue that an integrated framework can reconcile evolutionary models with proximate mechanisms that appear at first glance to be in conflict with these models. Overall, we encourage future studies to: (i) mimic ecological conditions in which those patterns evolve, and (ii) take advantage of the 'omic' opportunities to produce multi-level data and analytical models that effectively integrate across physiological and evolutionary theory. © 2017 The Author(s).

How to get the most bang for your buck: the evolution and physiology of nutrition-dependent resource allocation strategies

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

All organisms use resources to grow, survive and reproduce. The supply of these resources varies widely across landscapes and time, imposing ultimate constraints on the maximal trait values for allocation-related traits. In this review, we address three key questions fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of allocation strategies and their underlying mechanisms. First, we ask: how diverse are flexible resource allocation strategies among different organisms? We find there are many, varied, examples of flexible strategies that depend on nutrition. However, this diversity is often ignored in some of the best-known cases of resource allocation shifts, such as the commonly observed pattern of lifespan extension under nutrient limitation. A greater appreciation of the wide variety of flexible allocation strategies leads directly to our second major question: what conditions select for different plastic allocation strategies? Here, we highlight the need for additional models that explicitly consider the evolution of phenotypically plastic allocation strategies and empirical tests of the predictions of those models in natural populations. Finally, we consider the question: what are the underlying mechanisms determining resource allocation strategies? Although evolutionary biologists assume differential allocation of resources is a major factor limiting trait evolution, few proximate mechanisms are known that specifically support the model. We argue that an integrated framework can reconcile evolutionary models with proximate mechanisms that appear at first glance to be in conflict with these models. Overall, we encourage future studies to: (i) mimic ecological conditions in which those patterns evolve, and (ii) take advantage of the ‘omic’ opportunities to produce multi-level data and analytical models that effectively integrate across physiological and evolutionary theory. PMID:28637856

Two additional principles for determining which species to monitor.

PubMed

Wilson, Howard B; Rhodes, Jonathan R; Possingham, Hugh P

2015-11-01

Monitoring to detect population declines is widespread, but also costly. There is, consequently, a need to optimize monitoring to maximize cost-effectiveness. Here we develop a quantitative decision analysis framework for how to optimally allocate resources for monitoring among species. By keeping the framework simple, we analytically establish two new principles about which species are optimal to monitor for detecting declines: (1) those that lie on the boundary between species being allocated resources for conservation action and species that are not and (2) those with the greatest uncertainty in whether they are declining. These two principles are in addition to other factors that are also important in monitoring decisions, such as complementarity. We demonstrate the efficacy of these principles when other factors are not present, and show how the two principles can be combined. This analysis demonstrates that the most cost-effective species to monitor are ones where the information gained from monitoring is most likely to change the allocation of funds for action, not necessarily the most vulnerable or endangered. We suggest these results are general and apply to all ecological monitoring, not just of biological species: monitoring and information are only valuable when they are likely to change how people act.

The Architectural and Interior Design Planning Process.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cohen, Elaine

1994-01-01

Explains the planning process in designing effective library facilities and discusses library building requirements that result from electronic information technologies. Highlights include historical structures; Americans with Disabilities Act; resource allocation; electrical power; interior spaces; lighting; design development; the roles of…

Institutional Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olsen, Deborah

2000-01-01

Discusses institutional research (IR) in higher education, which is designed to generate information that serves planning, policy development, resource allocation, and management or evaluation decisions in all functional areas. Addresses its history, the skills and training needed by researchers, structure and staffing, and professional…

Evaluation of health resource utilization efficiency in community health centers of Jiangsu Province, China.

PubMed

Xu, Xinglong; Zhou, Lulin; Antwi, Henry Asante; Chen, Xi

2018-02-20

While the demand for health services keep escalating at the grass roots or rural areas of China, a substantial portion of healthcare resources remain stagnant in the more developed cities and this has entrenched health inequity in many parts of China. At its conception, China's Deepen Medical Reform started in 2012 was intended to flush out possible disparities and promote a more equitable and efficient distribution of healthcare resources. Nearly half a decade of this reform, there are uncertainties as to whether the attainment of the objectives of the reform is in sight. Using a hybrid of panel data analysis and an augmented data envelopment analysis (DEA), we model human resources, material, finance to determine their technical and scale efficiency to comprehensively evaluate the transverse and longitudinal allocation efficiency of community health resources in Jiangsu Province. We observed that the Deepen Medical Reform in China has led to an increase concern to ensure efficient allocation of community health resources by health policy makers in the province. This has led to greater efficiency in health resource allocation in Jiangsu in general but serious regional or municipal disparities still exist. Using the DEA model, we note that the output from the Community Health Centers does not commensurate with the substantial resources (human resources, materials, and financial) invested in them. We further observe that the case is worst in less-developed Northern parts of Jiangsu Province. The government of Jiangsu Province could improve the efficiency of health resource allocation by improving the community health service system, rationalizing the allocation of health personnel, optimizing the allocation of material resources, and enhancing the level of health of financial resource allocation.

Resource allocation processes at multilateral organizations working in global health

PubMed Central

Chi, Y-Ling; Bump, Jesse B

2018-01-01

Abstract International institutions provide well over US$10 billion in development assistance for health (DAH) annually and between 1990 and 2014, DAH disbursements totaled $458 billion but how do they decide who gets what, and for what purpose? In this article, we explore how allocation decisions were made by the nine convening agencies of the Equitable Access Initiative. We provide clear, plain language descriptions of the complete process from resource mobilization to allocation for the nine multilateral agencies with prominent agendas in global health. Then, through a comparative analysis we illuminate the choices and strategies employed in the nine international institutions. We find that resource allocation in all reviewed institutions follow a similar pattern, which we categorized in a framework of five steps: strategy definition, resource mobilization, eligibility of countries, support type and funds allocation. All the reviewed institutions generate resource allocation decisions through well-structured and fairly complex processes. Variations in those processes seem to reflect differences in institutional principles and goals. However, these processes have serious shortcomings. Technical problems include inadequate flexibility to account for or meet country needs. Although aid effectiveness and value for money are commonly referenced, we find that neither performance nor impact is a major criterion for allocating resources. We found very little formal consideration of the incentives generated by allocation choices. Political issues include non-transparent influence on allocation processes by donors and bureaucrats, and the common practice of earmarking funds to bypass the normal allocation process entirely. Ethical deficiencies include low accountability and transparency at international institutions, and limited participation by affected citizens or their representatives. We find that recipient countries have low influence on allocation processes themselves, although within these processes they have some influence in relatively narrow areas. PMID:29415239

Current costing models: are they suitable for allocating health resources? The example of fall injury prevention in Australia.

PubMed

Moller, Jerry

2005-01-01

The example of fall injury among older people is used to define and illustrate how current Australian systems for allocation of health resources perform for funding emerging public health issues. While the examples are Australian, the allocation and priority setting methods are common in the health sector in all developed western nations. With an ageing population the number of falls injuries in Australia and the cost of treatment will rise dramatically over the next 20-50 years. Current methods of allocating funds within the health system are not well suited to meeting this coming epidemic. The information requirements for cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness measures cannot be met. Marginal approaches to health funding are likely to continue to fund already well-funded treatment or politically driven prevention processes and to miss the opportunity for new prevention initiatives in areas that do not have a high political profile. Fall injury is one of many emerging areas that struggle to make claims for funding because the critical mass of intervention and evidence of its impact is not available. The beneficiaries of allocation failure may be those who treat the disease burden that could have been easily prevented. Changes to allocation mechanisms, data systems and new initiative funding practices are required to ensure that preventative strategies are able to compete on an equal footing with treatment approaches for mainstream health funding.

According to need? Predicting the amount of municipal home help allocated to elderly recipients in an urban area of Sweden.

PubMed

Meinow, Bettina; Kåreholt, Ingemar; Lagergren, Mårten

2005-07-01

Given the cutbacks which have been carried out in the Swedish welfare state despite the unchanged official policy of allocation of home help services according to needs, it is essential to evaluate the factors which guide the allocation of home help today. Whereas numerous studies have identified factors which predict entry into the home help system, the present paper concentrates on predictors of the amount of home help amongst those allocated assistance. Data were obtained from the population-based care and services section of the 2002 Swedish National Study of Aging and Care-Kungsholmen (SNAC-K). All home help recipients (> or = 65 years of age) living in an inner city district of Stockholm (Kungsholmen) were analysed with ordinary least squares regressions to identify predictors of the number of hours of home help (n = 943). Need indicators, i.e. dependency in activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental ADLs (IADLs), and cognitive impairment (Berger scale) were the strongest predictors of more hours of home help. The addition of sociodemographic (i.e. age, gender and income), environmental (i.e. informal care, housing adaptations and housing accessibility) and structural (i.e. variations in allocation decisions between one care manager and another) factors contributed only marginally to the explained variance. Hours of help entitlement increased slightly with greater age. Co-residing individuals were allocated significantly fewer home help hours than those living alone. Income and regular access to informal care were not significant predictors. The fact that services are provided according to need criteria does not necessarily mean that the provided services are adequate to meet needs. On the macro level, social policy decisions and available economic and manpower resources determine the allotment of municipal home help. However, this study in an urban sample suggests that, within the available resources, the amount of home help allocated is guided mainly by need indicators amongst those given assistance.

Toward a Multilevel Perspective on the Allocation of Educational Resources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Monk, David H.

1981-01-01

The importance of the following is demonstrated: (1) striking a balance between the attention given to resource allocation practices at macro compared to microlevels of decision making; and (2) learning more about how resource allocation decisions made at one level affect practices at other levels of the educational system. (Author/GK)

The Effects of Charter School Competition on School District Resource Allocation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arsen, David; Ni, Yongmei

2012-01-01

Purpose: This article examines two questions: (a) How does resource allocation change in school districts experiencing sustained charter school competition? (b) Among districts exposed to charter competition, are there differences in the resource allocation adjustments between those that do and do not succeed in stemming further enrollment loss to…

Minority Threat, Crime Control, and Police Resource Allocation in the Southwestern United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holmes, Malcolm D.; Smith, Brad W.; Freng, Adrienne B.; Munoz, Ed A.

2008-01-01

Numerous studies have examined political influences on communities' allocations of fiscal and personnel resources to policing. Rational choice theory maintains that these resources are distributed in accordance with the need for crime control, whereas conflict theory argues that they are allocated with the aim of controlling racial and ethnic…

How to Fairly Allocate Scarce Medical Resources: Ethical Argumentation under Scrutiny by Health Professionals and Lay People.

PubMed

Krütli, Pius; Rosemann, Thomas; Törnblom, Kjell Y; Smieszek, Timo

2016-01-01

Societies are facing medical resource scarcities, inter alia due to increased life expectancy and limited health budgets and also due to temporal or continuous physical shortages of resources like donor organs. This makes it challenging to meet the medical needs of all. Ethicists provide normative guidance for how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources, but legitimate decisions require additionally information regarding what the general public considers to be fair. The purpose of this study was to explore how lay people, general practitioners, medical students and other health professionals evaluate the fairness of ten allocation principles for scarce medical resources: 'sickest first', 'waiting list', 'prognosis', 'behaviour' (i.e., those who engage in risky behaviour should not be prioritized), 'instrumental value' (e.g., health care workers should be favoured during epidemics), 'combination of criteria' (i.e., a sequence of the 'youngest first', 'prognosis', and 'lottery' principles), 'reciprocity' (i.e., those who provided services to the society in the past should be rewarded), 'youngest first', 'lottery', and 'monetary contribution'. 1,267 respondents to an online questionnaire were confronted with hypothetical situations of scarcity regarding (i) donor organs, (ii) hospital beds during an epidemic, and (iii) joint replacements. Nine allocation principles were evaluated in terms of fairness for each type of scarcity along 7-point Likert scales. The relationship between demographic factors (gender, age, religiosity, political orientation, and health status) and fairness evaluations was modelled with logistic regression. Medical background was a major predictor of fairness evaluations. While general practitioners showed different response patterns for all three allocation situations, the responses by lay people were very similar. Lay people rated 'sickest first' and 'waiting list' on top of all allocation principles-e.g., for donor organs 83.8% (95% CI: [81.2%-86.2%]) rated 'sickest first' as fair ('fair' is represented by scale points 5-7), and 69.5% [66.2%-72.4%] rated 'waiting list' as fair. The corresponding results for general practitioners: 'prognosis' 79.7% [74.2%-84.9%], 'combination of criteria' 72.6% [66.4%-78.5%], and 'sickest first' 74.5% [68.6%-80.1%); these were the highest-rated allocation principles for donor organs allocation. Interestingly, only 44.3% [37.7%-50.9%] of the general practitioners rated 'instrumental value' as fair for the allocation of hospital beds during a flu epidemic. The fairness evaluations by general practitioners obtained for joint replacements: 'sickest first' 84.0% [78.8%-88.6%], 'combination of criteria' 65.6% [59.2%-71.8%], and 'prognosis' 63.7% [57.1%-70.0%]. 'Lottery', 'reciprocity', 'instrumental value', and 'monetary contribution' were considered very unfair allocation principles by both groups. Medical students' ratings were similar to those of general practitioners, and the ratings by other health professionals resembled those of lay people. Results are partly at odds with current conclusions proposed by some ethicists. A number of ethicists reject 'sickest first' and 'waiting list' as morally unjustifiable allocation principles, whereas those allocation principles received the highest fairness endorsements by lay people and to some extent also by health professionals. Decision makers are advised to consider whether or not to give ethicists, health professionals, and the general public an equal voice when attempting to arrive at maximally endorsed allocations of scarce medical resources.

How resource allocation decisions are made in the health care market.

PubMed

Vogel, W B

2000-10-01

This paper describes how economists view resource allocation decisions in health care markets. The basic economic decisions that must be made in any economic system and the resource allocation decisions in a perfectly competitive market are described. An idealized market can achieve an efficient allocation of resources and is contrasted with a more realistic description of the numerous ways in which health care markets depart from the perfectly competitive ideal. The implications of these departures for health care policy are discussed, along with key controversies concerning reliance upon markets for resource allocation in health care. In particular, the failure of competitive markets to achieve what many consider an equitable distribution of health care is emphasized. The paper concludes with some practical observations on how pharmacists can use the increasing emphasis on economic efficiency to the advantage of their profession.

Suggestions to ameliorate the inequity in urban/rural allocation of healthcare resources in China.

PubMed

Chen, Yiyi; Yin, Zhou; Xie, Qiong

2014-05-01

The imbalance in the allocation in healthcare resources between urban and rural areas has become a main focus of the recent medical reforms adopted in China. However, systematic analysis has identified wide differences in the allocation of healthcare resources between urban and rural areas, including healthcare expenditures and the number of healthcare facilities, available beds, and personnel. Therefore, the aim of this report was to identify ethical considerations in current governmental policies to rectify existing problems in the distribution of healthcare resources. Our findings indicate that the inequality in the distribution of healthcare resources does not adhere to ethical standards and the policies are flawed because they give rise to differences in the availability of medical care to urban and rural communities. To optimize the allocation of medical healthcare resources, countermeasures are proposed to formulate policies to urge the flow of public healthcare resources to rural areas, strengthen the responsibilities of both governmental and public financial investments, increase the construction of public healthcare facilities in rural areas, promote the quality of healthcare resources, adjust resource allocations to rural public healthcare facilities, and improve resource utilization efficiency by establishing two-way referral mechanisms.

Tactical resource allocation and elective patient admission planning in care processes.

PubMed

Hulshof, Peter J H; Boucherie, Richard J; Hans, Erwin W; Hurink, Johann L

2013-06-01

Tactical planning of resources in hospitals concerns elective patient admission planning and the intermediate term allocation of resource capacities. Its main objectives are to achieve equitable access for patients, to meet production targets/to serve the strategically agreed number of patients, and to use resources efficiently. This paper proposes a method to develop a tactical resource allocation and elective patient admission plan. These tactical plans allocate available resources to various care processes and determine the selection of patients to be served that are at a particular stage of their care process. Our method is developed in a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) framework and copes with multiple resources, multiple time periods and multiple patient groups with various uncertain treatment paths through the hospital, thereby integrating decision making for a chain of hospital resources. Computational results indicate that our method leads to a more equitable distribution of resources and provides control of patient access times, the number of patients served and the fraction of allocated resource capacity. Our approach is generic, as the base MILP and the solution approach allow for including various extensions to both the objective criteria and the constraints. Consequently, the proposed method is applicable in various settings of tactical hospital management.

Attention mediates the flexible allocation of visual working memory resources.

PubMed

Emrich, Stephen M; Lockhart, Holly A; Al-Aidroos, Naseem

2017-07-01

Though it is clear that it is impossible to store an unlimited amount of information in visual working memory (VWM), the limiting mechanisms remain elusive. While several models of VWM limitations exist, these typically characterize changes in performance as a function of the number of to-be-remembered items. Here, we examine whether changes in spatial attention could better account for VWM performance, independent of load. Across 2 experiments, performance was better predicted by the prioritization of memory items (i.e., attention) than by the number of items to be remembered (i.e., memory load). This relationship followed a power law, and held regardless of whether performance was assessed based on overall precision or any of 3 measures in a mixture model. Moreover, at large set sizes, even minimally attended items could receive a small proportion of resources, without any evidence for a discrete-capacity on the number of items that could be maintained in VWM. Finally, the observed data were best fit by a variable-precision model in which response error was related to the proportion of resources allocated to each item, consistent with a model of VWM in which performance is determined by the continuous allocation of attentional resources during encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Allocations for HANDI 2000 business management system

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wilson, D.

The Data Integration 2000 Project will result in an integrated and comprehensive set of functional applications containing core information necessary to support the Project Hanford Management Contract. It is based on the Commercial-Off-The-Shelf product solution with commercially proven business processes. The COTS product solution set, of PassPort and People Soft software, supports finance, supply and chemical management/Material Safety Data Sheet, human resources. Allocations at Fluor Daniel Hanford are burdens added to base costs using a predetermined rate.

Verification, Validation, and Accreditation (VV&A) of Federations (Verification, validation et accreditation (VV&A) des federations)

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-04-01

le manque de modèle universel pour la Vérification, la Validation et l’Accréditation des fédérations à cause des perspectives et besoins nationaux...federation application will depend on a number of factors, including the quality of the requirements information and the resources allocated to the VV&A...required) allocating the required functionality to federates, and developing a detailed plan for federation development and implementation. Step 4

Research on the applications of space technology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1979-01-01

Communication satellites and technology transfer are discussed in seven individual reports. Topics cover: (1) NASA'S technological alternatives assuming that the orbit-spectrum resource will continue to be allocated to communication satellite service providers at zero price; (2) the economic aspects of orbit-spectrum allocation; (3) the cost structure of local distribution systems for satellite communication; (4) the economic basis for national science and technology policy; (5) the economics of the household economy; (6) government patent policy; and (7) screening and evaluation in information dissemination.

Budgeting based on need: a model to determine sub-national allocation of resources for health services in Indonesia

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Allocating national resources to regions based on need is a key policy issue in most health systems. Many systems utilise proxy measures of need as the basis for allocation formulae. Increasingly these are underpinned by complex statistical methods to separate need from supplier induced utilisation. Assessment of need is then used to allocate existing global budgets to geographic areas. Many low and middle income countries are beginning to use formula methods for funding however these attempts are often hampered by a lack of information on utilisation, relative needs and whether the budgets allocated bear any relationship to cost. An alternative is to develop bottom-up estimates of the cost of providing for local need. This method is viable where public funding is focused on a relatively small number of targeted services. We describe a bottom-up approach to developing a formula for the allocation of resources. The method is illustrated in the context of the state minimum service package mandated to be provided by the Indonesian public health system. Methods A standardised costing methodology was developed that is sensitive to the main expected drivers of local cost variation including demographic structure, epidemiology and location. Essential package costing is often undertaken at a country level. It is less usual to utilise the methods across different parts of a country in a way that takes account of variation in population needs and location. Costing was based on best clinical practice in Indonesia and province specific data on distribution and costs of facilities. The resulting model was used to estimate essential package costs in a representative district in each province of the country. Findings Substantial differences in the costs of providing basic services ranging from USD 15 in urban Yogyakarta to USD 48 in sparsely populated North Maluku. These costs are driven largely by the structure of the population, particularly numbers of births, infants and children and also key diseases with high cost/prevalence and variation, most notably the level of malnutrition. The approach to resource allocation was implemented using existing data sources and permitted the rapid construction of a needs based formula that is highly specific to the package mandated across the country. Refinement could focus more on resources required to finance demand side costs and expansion of the service package to include priority non-communicable services. PMID:22931536

Budgeting based on need: a model to determine sub-national allocation of resources for health services in Indonesia.

PubMed

Ensor, Tim; Firdaus, Hafidz; Dunlop, David; Manu, Alex; Mukti, Ali Ghufron; Ayu Puspandari, Diah; von Roenne, Franz; Indradjaya, Stephanus; Suseno, Untung; Vaughan, Patrick

2012-08-29

Allocating national resources to regions based on need is a key policy issue in most health systems. Many systems utilise proxy measures of need as the basis for allocation formulae. Increasingly these are underpinned by complex statistical methods to separate need from supplier induced utilisation. Assessment of need is then used to allocate existing global budgets to geographic areas. Many low and middle income countries are beginning to use formula methods for funding however these attempts are often hampered by a lack of information on utilisation, relative needs and whether the budgets allocated bear any relationship to cost. An alternative is to develop bottom-up estimates of the cost of providing for local need. This method is viable where public funding is focused on a relatively small number of targeted services. We describe a bottom-up approach to developing a formula for the allocation of resources. The method is illustrated in the context of the state minimum service package mandated to be provided by the Indonesian public health system. A standardised costing methodology was developed that is sensitive to the main expected drivers of local cost variation including demographic structure, epidemiology and location. Essential package costing is often undertaken at a country level. It is less usual to utilise the methods across different parts of a country in a way that takes account of variation in population needs and location. Costing was based on best clinical practice in Indonesia and province specific data on distribution and costs of facilities. The resulting model was used to estimate essential package costs in a representative district in each province of the country. Substantial differences in the costs of providing basic services ranging from USD 15 in urban Yogyakarta to USD 48 in sparsely populated North Maluku. These costs are driven largely by the structure of the population, particularly numbers of births, infants and children and also key diseases with high cost/prevalence and variation, most notably the level of malnutrition. The approach to resource allocation was implemented using existing data sources and permitted the rapid construction of a needs based formula that is highly specific to the package mandated across the country. Refinement could focus more on resources required to finance demand side costs and expansion of the service package to include priority non-communicable services.

2001 Industry Studies: Land Combat Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2001-01-01

invest in human capital, to allocate resources to R&D, to take advantage of information technology , to expand their markets beyond traditional...their efforts to broaden their markets and services. This means greater efforts to exploit information technology in order to control worldwide...three essays of foremost importance to the industry supplement the study’s depth and utility: the US Army’s transformation, information technology

Complexity as a Factor of Quality and Cost in Large Scale Software Development.

DTIC Science & Technology

1979-12-01

allocating testing resources." [69 69I V. THE ROLE OF COMPLEXITY IN RESOURCE ESTIMATION AND ALLOCATION A. GENERAL It can be argued that blame for the...and allocation of testing resource by - identifying independent substructures and - identifying heavily used logic paths. 2. Setting a Design Threshold... RESOURCE ESTIMATION -------- 70 1. New Dynamic Field ------------------------- 70 2. Quality and Testing ----------------------- 71 3. Programming Units of

Accounting for Academic Staff Resources for the Tutorial Support of Open Learning. Coombe Lodge Working Paper. Information Bank Number 1605.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Birch, Derek W.; Latcham, Jack

The problems of resource allocation and management within open learning systems in colleges of further and higher education in Britain are discussed in this paper, with particular focus on the deployment of academic staff. First, the components of open learning systems are outlined; e.g., providing materials for students' private study, grading…

A Context-Aware Paradigm for Information Discovery and Dissemination in Mobile Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lundquist, Doug

2011-01-01

The increasing power and ubiquity of mobile wireless devices is enabling real-time information delivery for many diverse applications. A crucial question is how to allocate finite network resources efficiently and fairly despite the uncertainty common in highly dynamic mobile ad hoc networks. We propose a set of routing protocols, Self-Balancing…

Isolating Exogenous and Endogenous Modes of Temporal Attention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lawrence, Michael A.; Klein, Raymond M.

2013-01-01

The differential allocation of information processing resources over time, here termed "temporal attention," may be achieved by relatively automatic "exogenous" or controlled "endogenous" mechanisms. Over 100 years of research has confounded these theoretically distinct dimensions of temporal attention. The current…

Playing Games with Optimal Competitive Scheduling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frank, Jeremy; Crawford, James; Khatib, Lina; Brafman, Ronen

2005-01-01

This paper is concerned with the problem of allocating a unit capacity resource to multiple users within a pre-defined time period. The resource is indivisible, so that at most one user can use it at each time instance. However, different users may use it at different times. The users have independent, selfish preferences for when and for how long they are allocated this resource. Thus, they value different resource access durations differently, and they value different time slots differently. We seek an optimal allocation schedule for this resource.

Hybrid Resource Allocation Scheme with Proportional Fairness in OFDMA-Based Cognitive Radio Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Li; Xu, Changqing; Fan, Pingzhi; He, Jian

In this paper, the resource allocation problem for proportional fairness in hybrid Cognitive Radio (CR) systems is studied. In OFDMA-based CR systems, traditional resource allocation algorithms can not guarantee proportional rates among CR users (CRU) in each OFDM symbol because the number of available subchannels might be smaller than that of CRUs in some OFDM symbols. To deal with this time-varying nature of available spectrum resource, a hybrid CR scheme in which CRUs are allowed to use subchannels in both spectrum holes and primary users (PU) bands is adopted and a resource allocation algorithm is proposed to guarantee proportional rates among CRUs with no undue interference to PUs.

HIV epidemic control-a model for optimal allocation of prevention and treatment resources.

PubMed

Alistar, Sabina S; Long, Elisa F; Brandeau, Margaret L; Beck, Eduard J

2014-06-01

With 33 million people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) worldwide and 2.7 million new infections occurring annually, additional HIV prevention and treatment efforts are urgently needed. However, available resources for HIV control are limited and must be used efficiently to minimize the future spread of the epidemic. We develop a model to determine the appropriate resource allocation between expanded HIV prevention and treatment services. We create an epidemic model that incorporates multiple key populations with different transmission modes, as well as production functions that relate investment in prevention and treatment programs to changes in transmission and treatment rates. The goal is to allocate resources to minimize R 0, the reproductive rate of infection. We first develop a single-population model and determine the optimal resource allocation between HIV prevention and treatment. We extend the analysis to multiple independent populations, with resource allocation among interventions and populations. We then include the effects of HIV transmission between key populations. We apply our model to examine HIV epidemic control in two different settings, Uganda and Russia. As part of these applications, we develop a novel approach for estimating empirical HIV program production functions. Our study provides insights into the important question of resource allocation for a country's optimal response to its HIV epidemic and provides a practical approach for decision makers. Better decisions about allocating limited HIV resources can improve response to the epidemic and increase access to HIV prevention and treatment services for millions of people worldwide.

Applying economic principles to health care.

PubMed Central

Scott, R. D.; Solomon, S. L.; McGowan, J. E.

2001-01-01

Applying economic thinking to an understanding of resource use in patient care is challenging given the complexities of delivering health care in a hospital. Health-care markets lack the characteristics needed to determine a "market" price that reflects the economic value of resources used. However, resource allocation in a hospital can be analyzed by using production theory to determine efficient resource use. The information provided by hospital epidemiologists is critical to understanding health-care production processes used by a hospital and developing economic incentives to promote antibiotic effectiveness and infection control. PMID:11294724

30 CFR 1206.459 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.459 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Indian Coal § 1206.459 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

30 CFR 1206.459 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.459 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Indian Coal § 1206.459 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

30 CFR 1206.260 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.260 Section... INTERIOR Natural Resources Revenue PRODUCT VALUATION Federal Coal § 1206.260 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was...

30 CFR 1206.260 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.260 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Federal Coal § 1206.260 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

30 CFR 1206.459 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.459 Section... INTERIOR Natural Resources Revenue PRODUCT VALUATION Indian Coal § 1206.459 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was...

30 CFR 1206.260 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.260 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Federal Coal § 1206.260 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

30 CFR 1206.459 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.459 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Indian Coal § 1206.459 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

30 CFR 1206.260 - Allocation of washed coal.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 30 Mineral Resources 3 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Allocation of washed coal. 1206.260 Section... RESOURCES REVENUE PRODUCT VALUATION Federal Coal § 1206.260 Allocation of washed coal. (a) When coal is subjected to washing, the washed coal must be allocated to the leases from which it was extracted. (b) When...

Space Station Freedom resource allocation accommodation of technology payload requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Avery, Don E.; Collier, Lisa D.; Gartrell, Charles F.

1990-01-01

An overview of the Office of Aeronautics, Exploration, and Technology (OAET) Space Station Freedom Technology Payload Development Program is provided, and the OAET Station resource requirements are reviewed. The requirements are contrasted with current proposed resource allocations. A discussion of the issues and conclusions are provided. It is concluded that an overall 20 percent resource allocation is appropriate to support OAET's technology development program, that some resources are inadequate even at the 20 percent level, and that bartering resources among U.S. users and international partners and increasing the level of automation may be viable solutions to the resource constraint problem.

Adaptive Management of Computing and Network Resources for Spacecraft Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pfarr, Barbara; Welch, Lonnie R.; Detter, Ryan; Tjaden, Brett; Huh, Eui-Nam; Szczur, Martha R. (Technical Monitor)

2000-01-01

It is likely that NASA's future spacecraft systems will consist of distributed processes which will handle dynamically varying workloads in response to perceived scientific events, the spacecraft environment, spacecraft anomalies and user commands. Since all situations and possible uses of sensors cannot be anticipated during pre-deployment phases, an approach for dynamically adapting the allocation of distributed computational and communication resources is needed. To address this, we are evolving the DeSiDeRaTa adaptive resource management approach to enable reconfigurable ground and space information systems. The DeSiDeRaTa approach embodies a set of middleware mechanisms for adapting resource allocations, and a framework for reasoning about the real-time performance of distributed application systems. The framework and middleware will be extended to accommodate (1) the dynamic aspects of intra-constellation network topologies, and (2) the complete real-time path from the instrument to the user. We are developing a ground-based testbed that will enable NASA to perform early evaluation of adaptive resource management techniques without the expense of first deploying them in space. The benefits of the proposed effort are numerous, including the ability to use sensors in new ways not anticipated at design time; the production of information technology that ties the sensor web together; the accommodation of greater numbers of missions with fewer resources; and the opportunity to leverage the DeSiDeRaTa project's expertise, infrastructure and models for adaptive resource management for distributed real-time systems.

A survey and taxonomy on energy efficient resource allocation techniques for cloud computing systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hameed, Abdul; Khoshkbarforoushha, Alireza; Ranjan, Rajiv

In a cloud computing paradigm, energy efficient allocation of different virtualized ICT resources (servers, storage disks, and networks, and the like) is a complex problem due to the presence of heterogeneous application (e.g., content delivery networks, MapReduce, web applications, and the like) workloads having contentious allocation requirements in terms of ICT resource capacities (e.g., network bandwidth, processing speed, response time, etc.). Several recent papers have tried to address the issue of improving energy efficiency in allocating cloud resources to applications with varying degree of success. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no published literature on this subjectmore » that clearly articulates the research problem and provides research taxonomy for succinct classification of existing techniques. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to identify open challenges associated with energy efficient resource allocation. In this regard, the study, first, outlines the problem and existing hardware and software-based techniques available for this purpose. Furthermore, available techniques already presented in the literature are summarized based on the energy-efficient research dimension taxonomy. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing techniques are comprehensively analyzed against the proposed research dimension taxonomy namely: resource adaption policy, objective function, allocation method, allocation operation, and interoperability.« less

Where Does the Money Go? Resource Allocation in Elementary and Secondary Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Picus, Lawrence O., Ed.; Wattenbarger, James L., Ed.

The 13 Chapters in this book address the important issue of how schools and school districts allocate their resources. The book summarizes the emerging research in educational resource allocations (tax dollars) at the district, school, and classroom levels. Following the preface by Lawrence O. Picus, the chapters include: (1) "Why Do We Need to…

Allocation Anatomy: How District Policies That Deploy Resources Can Support (or Undermine) District Reform Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roza, Marguerite

2008-01-01

The goal of this paper is to explore the effects of micro-budgeting decisions and show how they might support or hamper district reform strategies. The study draws on public and private sector resource allocation literature to identify key elements of resource allocation decisions. These elements are used to highlight different allocation…

A Model of Resource Allocation in Public School Districts: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chambers, Jay G.

This paper formulates a comprehensive model of resource allocation in a local public school district. The theoretical framework specified could be applied equally well to any number of local public social service agencies. Section 1 develops the theoretical model describing the process of resource allocation. This involves the determination of the…

Resource Allocation Models and Accountability: A Jamaican Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nkrumah-Young, Kofi K.; Powell, Philip

2008-01-01

Higher education institutions (HEIs) may be funded privately, by the state or by a mixture of the two. Nevertheless, any state financing of HE necessitates a mechanism to determine the level of support and the channels through which it is to be directed; that is, a resource allocation model. Public funding, through resource allocation models,…

Auction-based bandwidth allocation in the Internet

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Jiaolong; Zhang, Chi

2002-07-01

It has been widely accepted that auctioning which is the pricing approach with minimal information requirement is a proper tool to manage scare network resources. Previous works focus on Vickrey auction which is incentive compatible in classic auction theory. In the beginning of this paper, the faults of the most representative auction-based mechanisms are discussed. And then a new method called uniform-price auction (UPA), which has the simplest auction rule is proposed and it's incentive compatibility in the network environment is also proved. Finally, the basic mode is extended to support applications which require minimum bandwidth guarantees for a given time period by introducing derivative market, and a market mechanism for network resource allocation which is predictable, riskless, and simple for end-users is completed.

Which Patients First? Setting Priorities for Antiretroviral Therapy Where Resources Are Limited

PubMed Central

McGough, Laura J.; Reynolds, Steven J.; Quinn, Thomas C.; Zenilman, Jonathan M.

2005-01-01

The availability of limited funds from international agencies for the purchase of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in developing countries presents challenges, especially in prioritizing who should receive therapy. Public input and the protection of human rights are crucial in making treatment programs equitable and accountable. By examining historical precedents of resource allocation, we aim to provoke and inform debate about current ARV programs. Through a critical review of the published literature, we evaluate 4 precedents for key lessons: the discovery of insulin for diabetes in 1922, the release of penicillin for civilian use in 1943, the development of chronic hemodialysis programs in 1961, and current allocation of liver transplants. We then describe current rationing mechanisms for ARVs. PMID:15983271

Rail-Highway Crossing Resource Allocation Procedure - User's Guide. Third Edition

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1987-08-01

To assist states and railroads in determining effective allocations of Federal funds for rail-highway crossing improvements, the U.S. Department of Transportation has developed the DOT Rail-Highway Crossing Resource Allocation Procedure. The procedur...

Mass and Volume Optimization of Space Flight Medical Kits

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Keenan, A. B.; Foy, Millennia Hope; Myers, Jerry

2014-01-01

Resource allocation is a critical aspect of space mission planning. All resources, including medical resources, are subject to a number of mission constraints such a maximum mass and volume. However, unlike many resources, there is often limited understanding in how to optimize medical resources for a mission. The Integrated Medical Model (IMM) is a probabilistic model that estimates medical event occurrences and mission outcomes for different mission profiles. IMM simulates outcomes and describes the impact of medical events in terms of lost crew time, medical resource usage, and the potential for medically required evacuation. Previously published work describes an approach that uses the IMM to generate optimized medical kits that maximize benefit to the crew subject to mass and volume constraints. We improve upon the results obtained previously and extend our approach to minimize mass and volume while meeting some benefit threshold. METHODS We frame the medical kit optimization problem as a modified knapsack problem and implement an algorithm utilizing dynamic programming. Using this algorithm, optimized medical kits were generated for 3 mission scenarios with the goal of minimizing the medical kit mass and volume for a specified likelihood of evacuation or Crew Health Index (CHI) threshold. The algorithm was expanded to generate medical kits that maximize likelihood of evacuation or CHI subject to mass and volume constraints. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS In maximizing benefit to crew health subject to certain constraints, our algorithm generates medical kits that more closely resemble the unlimited-resource scenario than previous approaches which leverage medical risk information generated by the IMM. Our work here demonstrates that this algorithm provides an efficient and effective means to objectively allocate medical resources for spaceflight missions and provides an effective means of addressing tradeoffs in medical resource allocations and crew mission success parameters.

Urban Resources Selection and Allocation for Emergency Shelters: In a Multi-Hazard Environment.

PubMed

Chen, Wei; Zhai, Guofang; Ren, Chongqiang; Shi, Yijun; Zhang, Jianxin

2018-06-14

This study explores how emergency shelters can adapt to a multi-hazard environment by geographic information system (GIS) and takes Guangzhou as a case for analysis. The physical suitability of the overall urban resources was first assessed by aiming to select the suitable resources and safe locations for emergency shelters in the context of multiple disasters. Afterward, by analyzing the scale and spatial distribution of affected areas and populations under different types of disaster scenarios, the demand for different kinds of shelters were predicted. Lastly, taking into account the coverage of the affected people, shelters were allocated according to different conditions in the districts. This work will hopefully provide a reference for the construction of emergency shelters and help form emergency operations in order to mitigate the impact of hazards. The issues identified in the study need to be further studied in medium or small-scale cities.

The dynamics of resource allocation and costs of reproduction in a sexually dimorphic, wind-pollinated dioecious plant.

PubMed

Teitel, Z; Pickup, M; Field, D L; Barrett, S C H

2016-01-01

Sexual dimorphism in resource allocation is expected to change during the life cycle of dioecious plants because of temporal differences between the sexes in reproductive investment. Given the potential for sex-specific differences in reproductive costs, resource availability may contribute to variation in reproductive allocation in females and males. Here, we used Rumex hastatulus, a dioecious, wind-pollinated annual plant, to investigate whether sexual dimorphism varies with life-history stage and nutrient availability, and determine whether allocation patterns differ depending on reproductive commitment. To examine if the costs of reproduction varied between the sexes, reproduction was either allowed or prevented through bud removal, and biomass allocation was measured at maturity. In a second experiment to assess variation in sexual dimorphism across the life cycle, and whether this varied with resource availability, plants were grown in high and low nutrients and allocation to roots, aboveground vegetative growth and reproduction were measured at three developmental stages. Males prevented from reproducing compensated with increased above- and belowground allocation to a much larger degree than females, suggesting that male reproductive costs reduce vegetative growth. The proportional allocation to roots, reproductive structures and aboveground vegetative growth varied between the sexes and among life-cycle stages, but not with nutrient treatment. Females allocated proportionally more resources to roots than males at peak flowering, but this pattern was reversed at reproductive maturity under low-nutrient conditions. Our study illustrates the importance of temporal dynamics in sex-specific resource allocation and provides support for high male reproductive costs in wind-pollinated plants. © 2015 German Botanical Society and The Royal Botanical Society of the Netherlands.

The missing link in Aboriginal care: resource accounting.

PubMed

Ashton, C W; Duffie-Ashton, Denise

2008-01-01

Resource accounting principles provide more effective planning for Aboriginal healthcare delivery through driving best management practices, efficacious techniques for long-term resource allocation, transparency of information and performance measurement. Major improvements to Aboriginal health in New Zealand and Australia were facilitated in the context of this public finance paradigm, rather than cash accounting systems that remain the current method for public departments in Canada. Multiple funding sources and fragmented delivery of Aboriginal healthcare can be remedied through similar adoption of such principles.

Resource allocation and budgetary mechanisms for decentralized health systems: experiences from Balochistan, Pakistan.

PubMed

Green, A; Ali, B; Naeem, A; Ross, D

2000-01-01

This paper identifies key political and technical issues involved in the development of an appropriate resource allocation and budgetary system for the public health sector, using experience gained in the Province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The resource allocation and budgetary system is a critical, yet often neglected, component of any decentralization policy. Current systems are often based on historical incrementalism that is neither efficient nor equitable. This article describes technical work carried out in Balochistan to develop a system of resource allocation and budgeting that is needs-based, in line with policies of decentralization, and implementable within existing technical constraints. However, the development of technical systems, while necessary, is not a sufficient condition for the implementation of a resource allocation and decentralized budgeting system. This is illustrated by analysing the constraints that have been encountered in the development of such a system in Balochistan.

A Protocol for Generating and Exchanging (Genome-Scale) Metabolic Resource Allocation Models.

PubMed

Reimers, Alexandra-M; Lindhorst, Henning; Waldherr, Steffen

2017-09-06

In this article, we present a protocol for generating a complete (genome-scale) metabolic resource allocation model, as well as a proposal for how to represent such models in the systems biology markup language (SBML). Such models are used to investigate enzyme levels and achievable growth rates in large-scale metabolic networks. Although the idea of metabolic resource allocation studies has been present in the field of systems biology for some years, no guidelines for generating such a model have been published up to now. This paper presents step-by-step instructions for building a (dynamic) resource allocation model, starting with prerequisites such as a genome-scale metabolic reconstruction, through building protein and noncatalytic biomass synthesis reactions and assigning turnover rates for each reaction. In addition, we explain how one can use SBML level 3 in combination with the flux balance constraints and our resource allocation modeling annotation to represent such models.

Resource allocation and budgetary mechanisms for decentralized health systems: experiences from Balochistan, Pakistan.

PubMed Central

Green, A.; Ali, B.; Naeem, A.; Ross, D.

2000-01-01

This paper identifies key political and technical issues involved in the development of an appropriate resource allocation and budgetary system for the public health sector, using experience gained in the Province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The resource allocation and budgetary system is a critical, yet often neglected, component of any decentralization policy. Current systems are often based on historical incrementalism that is neither efficient nor equitable. This article describes technical work carried out in Balochistan to develop a system of resource allocation and budgeting that is needs-based, in line with policies of decentralization, and implementable within existing technical constraints. However, the development of technical systems, while necessary, is not a sufficient condition for the implementation of a resource allocation and decentralized budgeting system. This is illustrated by analysing the constraints that have been encountered in the development of such a system in Balochistan. PMID:10994286

Opportunistic Capacity-Based Resource Allocation for Chunk-Based Multi-Carrier Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Huang, Jie; Zeng, Xiaoping; Jian, Xin; Tan, Xiaoheng; Zhang, Qi

2017-01-01

The spectrum allocation for cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSNs) has received considerable research attention under the assumption that the spectrum environment is static. However, in practice, the spectrum environment varies over time due to primary user/secondary user (PU/SU) activity and mobility, resulting in time-varied spectrum resources. This paper studies resource allocation for chunk-based multi-carrier CRSNs with time-varied spectrum resources. We present a novel opportunistic capacity model through a continuous time semi-Markov chain (CTSMC) to describe the time-varied spectrum resources of chunks and, based on this, a joint power and chunk allocation model by considering the opportunistically available capacity of chunks is proposed. To reduce the computational complexity, we split this model into two sub-problems and solve them via the Lagrangian dual method. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed opportunistic capacity-based resource allocation algorithm can achieve better performance compared with traditional algorithms when the spectrum environment is time-varied. PMID:28106803

Evaluation on equality and efficiency of health resources allocation and health services utilization in China.

PubMed

Sun, Jian; Luo, Hongye

2017-07-14

China is faced with a daunting challenge to equality and efficiency in health resources allocation and health services utilization in the context of rapid economic growth. This study sought to evaluate the equality and efficiency of health resources allocation and health services utilization in China. Demographic, economic, and geographic area data was sourced from China Statistical Yearbook 2012-2016. Data related to health resources and health services was obtained from China Health Statistics Yearbook 2012-2016. Furthermore, we evaluated the equality of health resources allocation based on Gini coefficient. Concentration index was used to measure the equality in utilization of health services. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was employed to assess the efficiency of health resources allocation. From 2011 to 2015, the Gini coefficients for health resources by population ranged between 0.0644 and 0.1879, while the Gini coefficients for the resources by geographic area ranged from 0.6136 to 0.6568. Meanwhile, the concentration index values for health services utilization ranged from -0.0392 to 0.2110. Moreover, in 2015, 10 provinces (32.26%) were relatively efficient in terms of health resources allocation, while 7 provinces (22.58%) and 14 provinces (45.16%) were weakly efficient and inefficient, respectively. There exist distinct regional disparities in the distribution of health resources in China, which are mainly reflected in the geographic distribution of health resources. Furthermore, the people living in the eastern developed areas are more likely to use outpatient care, while the people living in western underdeveloped areas are more likely to use inpatient care. Moreover, the efficiency of health resources allocation in 21 provinces (67.74%) of China was low and needs to be improved. Thus, the government should pay more attention to the equality based on geographic area, guide patients to choose medical treatment rationally, and optimize the resource investments for different provinces.

The Differential Effects of Reward on Space- and Object-Based Attentional Allocation

PubMed Central

Shomstein, Sarah

2013-01-01

Estimating reward contingencies and allocating attentional resources to a subset of relevant information are the most important contributors to increasing adaptability of an organism. Although recent evidence suggests that reward- and attention-based guidance recruits overlapping cortical regions and has similar effects on sensory responses, the exact nature of the relationship between the two remains elusive. Here, using event-related fMRI on human participants, we contrasted the effects of reward on space- and object-based selection in the same experimental setting. Reward was either distributed randomly or biased a particular object. Behavioral and neuroimaging results show that space- and object-based attention is influenced by reward differentially. Space-based attentional allocation is mandatory, integrating reward information over time, whereas object-based attentional allocation is a default setting that is completely replaced by the reward signal. Nonadditivity of the effects of reward and object-based attention was observed consistently at multiple levels of analysis in early visual areas as well as in control regions. These results provide strong evidence that space- and object-based allocation are two independent attentional mechanisms, and suggest that reward serves to constrain attentional selection. PMID:23804086

A Subcarrier-Pair Based Resource Allocation Scheme Using Proportional Fairness for Cooperative OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Networks

PubMed Central

Ma, Yongtao; Zhou, Liuji; Liu, Kaihua

2013-01-01

The paper presents a joint subcarrier-pair based resource allocation algorithm in order to improve the efficiency and fairness of cooperative multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MU-OFDM) cognitive radio (CR) systems. A communication model where one source node communicates with one destination node assisted by one half-duplex decode-and-forward (DF) relay is considered in the paper. An interference-limited environment is considered, with the constraint of transmitted sum-power over all channels and aggregate average interference towards multiple primary users (PUs). The proposed resource allocation algorithm is capable of maximizing both the system transmission efficiency and fairness among secondary users (SUs). Besides, the proposed algorithm can also keep the interference introduced to the PU bands below a threshold. A proportional fairness constraint is used to assure that each SU can achieve a required data rate, with quality of service guarantees. Moreover, we extend the analysis to the scenario where each cooperative SU has no channel state information (CSI) about non-adjacent links. We analyzed the throughput and fairness tradeoff in CR system. A detailed analysis of the performance of the proposed algorithm is presented with the simulation results. PMID:23939586

Equity in healthcare resource allocation decision making: A systematic review.

PubMed

Lane, Haylee; Sarkies, Mitchell; Martin, Jennifer; Haines, Terry

2017-02-01

To identify elements of endorsed definitions of equity in healthcare and classify domains of these definitions so that policy makers, managers, clinicians, and politicians can form an operational definition of equity that reflects the values and preferences of the society they serve. Systematic review where verbatim text describing explicit and implicit definitions of equity were extracted and subjected to a thematic analysis. The full holdings of the AMED, CINAHL plus, OVID Medline, Scopus, PsychInfo and ProQuest (ProQuest Health & Medical Complete, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source, ProQuest Social Science Journals) were individually searched in April 2015. Studies were included if they provided an original, explicit or implicit definition of equity in regards to healthcare resource allocation decision making. Papers that only cited earlier definitions of equity and provided no new information or extensions to this definition were excluded. The search strategy yielded 74 papers appropriate for this review; 60 of these provided an explicit definition of equity, with a further 14 papers discussing implicit elements of equity that the authors endorsed in regards to healthcare resource allocation decision making. FIVE KEY THEMES EMERGED: i) Equalisation across the health service supply/access/outcome chain, ii) Need or potential to benefit, iii) Groupings of equalisation, iv) Caveats to equalisation, and v) Close enough is good enough. There is great inconsistency in definitions of equity endorsed by different authors. Operational definitions of equity need to be more explicit in addressing these five thematic areas before they can be directly applied to healthcare resource allocation decisions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

78 FR 40696 - Proposed Information Collection; Comment Request; Alaska Crab Cost Recovery

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-07-08

... Collection; Comment Request; Alaska Crab Cost Recovery AGENCY: National Oceanic and Atmospheric..., a limited access system that allocates BSAI Crab resources among harvesters, processors, and coastal communities. The intent of the Alaska Crab Cost Recovery is to [[Page 40697

Preventing child pedestrian injury: pedestrian education or traffic calming?

PubMed

Roberts, I; Ashton, T; Dunn, R; Lee-Joe, T

1994-06-01

The traditional approach to the prevention of child pedestrian injuries in New Zealand is pedestrian education. However, none of the programs currently being implemented in New Zealand have ever been shown to reduce injury rates. The allocation of scarce resources to pedestrian education must therefore be questioned. In this paper we estimate the number of serious child pedestrian injuries which might be prevented if the resources allocated to pedestrian education were allocated instead to environmental approaches, in particular, to traffic calming. It is estimated that approximately 18 hospitalisations of child pedestrians could be prevented each year under this alternative resource allocation, disregarding any other benefits of traffic calming. These results emphasise the need to consider the potential sacrifices involved in the allocation of scarce resources to child pedestrian education.

Summary of Research 1997 Department of Systems Management.

DTIC Science & Technology

1999-01-01

formulation and execution; impacts of budget allocation , reallocation, and reduction; imple- mentation of Defense Resource Management Systems; and the...flexible structure that can be applied to a wide range of resource allocation problems. PUBLICATIONS: Dolk, D., Murphy, M., and Thomas, G...policies, procedures, and rationale in deter- mining recruiting resource allocation decisions. The methodology relies on a review of the literature

The Role of Temporal Context and Expectancy in Resource Allocation to and Perception of Rapid Serial Events

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kranczioch, Cornelia; Dhinakaran, Janani

2013-01-01

The perception of target events presented in a rapid stream of non-targets is impaired for early target positions, but then gradually improves, a phenomenon known as attentional awakening. This phenomenon has been associated with better resource allocation. It is unclear though whether improved resource allocation and attentional awakening are a…

Budgeting and Resource Allocation at Princeton University. Report of a Demonstration Project.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Benacerraf, Paul; And Others

This report summarizes the work done to date on a study of resource allocation in universities. This report specifically is concerned with budgeting and resource allocation at Princeton University. The document consists of 4 sections. The first section deals with the process of budgeting at Princeton as it has evolved over the last 4 years. After…

Motion-related resource allocation in dynamic wireless visual sensor network environments.

PubMed

Katsenou, Angeliki V; Kondi, Lisimachos P; Parsopoulos, Konstantinos E

2014-01-01

This paper investigates quality-driven cross-layer optimization for resource allocation in direct sequence code division multiple access wireless visual sensor networks. We consider a single-hop network topology, where each sensor transmits directly to a centralized control unit (CCU) that manages the available network resources. Our aim is to enable the CCU to jointly allocate the transmission power and source-channel coding rates for each node, under four different quality-driven criteria that take into consideration the varying motion characteristics of each recorded video. For this purpose, we studied two approaches with a different tradeoff of quality and complexity. The first one allocates the resources individually for each sensor, whereas the second clusters them according to the recorded level of motion. In order to address the dynamic nature of the recorded scenery and re-allocate the resources whenever it is dictated by the changes in the amount of motion in the scenery, we propose a mechanism based on the particle swarm optimization algorithm, combined with two restarting schemes that either exploit the previously determined resource allocation or conduct a rough estimation of it. Experimental simulations demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approaches.

Research on Evaluation of resource allocation efficiency of transportation system based on DEA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Zhehui; Du, Linan

2017-06-01

In this paper, we select the time series data onto 1985-2015 years, construct the land (shoreline) resources, capital and labor as inputs. The index system of the output is freight volume and passenger volume, we use Quantitative analysis based on DEA method evaluated the resource allocation efficiency of railway, highway, water transport and civil aviation in China. Research shows that the resource allocation efficiency of various modes of transport has obvious difference, and the impact on scale efficiency is more significant. The most important two ways to optimize the allocation of resources to improve the efficiency of the combination of various modes of transport is promoting the co-ordination of various modes of transport and constructing integrated transportation system.

Priority setting and the ethics of resource allocation within VA healthcare facilities: results of a survey.

PubMed

Foglia, Mary Beth; Pearlman, Robert A; Bottrell, Melissa M; Altemose, Jane A; Fox, Ellen

2008-01-01

Setting priorities and the subsequent allocation of resources is a major ethical issue facing healthcare facilities, including the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the largest integrated healthcare delivery network in the United States. Yet despite the importance of priority setting and its impact on those who receive and those who provide care, we know relatively little about how clinicians and managers view allocation processes within their facilities. The purpose of this secondary analysis of survey data was to characterize staff members' perceptions regarding the fairness of healthcare ethics practices related to resource allocation in Veterans Administration (VA) facilities. The specific aim of the study was to compare the responses of clinicians, clinician managers, and non-clinician managers with respect to these survey items. We utilized a paper and web-based survey and a cross-sectional design of VHA clinicians and managers. Our sample consisted of a purposive stratified sample of 109 managers and a stratified random sample of 269 clinicians employed 20 or more hours per week in one of four VA medical centers. The four medical centers were participating as field sites selected to test the logistics of administering and reporting results of the Integrated Ethics Staff Survey, an assessment tool aimed at characterizing a broad range of ethical practices within a healthcare organization. In general, clinicians were more critical than clinician managers or non-clinician managers of the institutions' allocation processes and of the impact of resource decisions on patient care. Clinicians commonly reported that they did not (a) understand their facility's decision-making processes, (b) receive explanations from management regarding the reasons behind important allocation decisions, or (b) perceive that they were influential in allocation decisions. In addition, clinicians and managers both perceived that education related to the ethics of resource allocation was insufficient and that their facilities could increase their effectiveness in identifying and resolving ethical problems related to resource allocation. How well a healthcare facility ensures fairness in the way it allocates its resources across programs and services depends on multiple factors, including awareness by decision makers that setting priorities and allocating resources is a moral enterprise (moral awareness), the availability of a consistent process that includes important stakeholder groups (procedural justice), and concurrence by stakeholders that decisions represent outcomes that fairly balance competing interests and have a positive net effect on the quality of care (distributive justice). In this study, clinicians and managers alike identified the need for improvement in healthcare ethics practices related to resource allocation.

Universal access to HIV treatment in developing countries: going beyond the misinterpretations of the 'cost-effectiveness' algorithm.

PubMed

Moatti, Jean Paul; Marlink, Richard; Luchini, Stephane; Kazatchkine, Michel

2008-07-01

Economic cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) has been proposed as the appropriate tool to set priorities for resource allocation among available health interventions. Controversy remains about the way CEA should be used in the field of HIV/AIDS. This paper reviews the general literature in health economics and public economics about the use of CEA for priority setting in public health, in order better to inform current debates about resource allocation in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Theoretical and practical limitations of CEA do not raise major problems when it is applied to compare alternatives for treating the same medical condition or public health problem. Using CEA to set priorities among different health interventions by ranking them from the lowest to the highest values of their cost per life-year saved is appropriate only under the very restrictive and unrealistic assumptions that all interventions compared are discrete and finite alternatives that cannot vary in terms of size and scale. In order for CEA to inform resource allocation compared across programmes to fight the AIDS epidemic, a pragmatic interpretation of this economic approach, like that proposed by the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, is better suited. Interventions, like a number of preventive strategies and first-line antiretroviral treatments for HIV, whose marginal costs per additional life-year saved are less than three times the gross domestic product per capita, should be considered cost-effective. Because of their empirical and theoretical limitations, results of CEA should only be one element in priority setting among interventions for HIV/AIDS, which should also be informed by explicit debates about societal and ethical preferences.

Adoption of Clinical Information Systems in Health Services Organizations

PubMed Central

Austin, Charles J.; Holland, Gloria J.

1988-01-01

This paper presents a conceptual model of factors which influence organizational decisions to invest in the installation of clinical information systems. Using results of previous research as a framework, the relative influence of clinical, fiscal, and strategic-institutional decision structures are examined. These adoption decisions are important in health services organizations because clinical information is essential for managing demand and allocating resources, managing quality of care, and controlling costs.

Extended resource allocation index for link prediction of complex network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Shuxin; Ji, Xinsheng; Liu, Caixia; Bai, Yi

2017-08-01

Recently, a number of similarity-based methods have been proposed to predict the missing links in complex network. Among these indices, the resource allocation index performs very well with lower time complexity. However, it ignores potential resources transferred by local paths between two endpoints. Motivated by the resource exchange taking places between endpoints, an extended resource allocation index is proposed. Empirical study on twelve real networks and three synthetic dynamic networks has shown that the index we proposed can achieve a good performance, compared with eight mainstream baselines.

Restructuring for the 90s and Beyond: Solution Based Learning in the Era of Smart Homes, Wired Communities, Fast Systems, Global Networks, and Fast Forward Learners in a Borderless World.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Groff, Warren H.

An ultimate purpose of education is human resource development to provide society with a critical mass of intellectual capital and competent workforces. To accomplish this end, leaders implement planning processes to guide policy-making, develop institutions, and allocate resources. Although new information technologies are becoming commonplace in…

Resource allocation processes at multilateral organizations working in global health.

PubMed

Chi, Y-Ling; Bump, Jesse B

2018-02-01

International institutions provide well over US$10 billion in development assistance for health (DAH) annually and between 1990 and 2014, DAH disbursements totaled $458 billion but how do they decide who gets what, and for what purpose? In this article, we explore how allocation decisions were made by the nine convening agencies of the Equitable Access Initiative. We provide clear, plain language descriptions of the complete process from resource mobilization to allocation for the nine multilateral agencies with prominent agendas in global health. Then, through a comparative analysis we illuminate the choices and strategies employed in the nine international institutions. We find that resource allocation in all reviewed institutions follow a similar pattern, which we categorized in a framework of five steps: strategy definition, resource mobilization, eligibility of countries, support type and funds allocation. All the reviewed institutions generate resource allocation decisions through well-structured and fairly complex processes. Variations in those processes seem to reflect differences in institutional principles and goals. However, these processes have serious shortcomings. Technical problems include inadequate flexibility to account for or meet country needs. Although aid effectiveness and value for money are commonly referenced, we find that neither performance nor impact is a major criterion for allocating resources. We found very little formal consideration of the incentives generated by allocation choices. Political issues include non-transparent influence on allocation processes by donors and bureaucrats, and the common practice of earmarking funds to bypass the normal allocation process entirely. Ethical deficiencies include low accountability and transparency at international institutions, and limited participation by affected citizens or their representatives. We find that recipient countries have low influence on allocation processes themselves, although within these processes they have some influence in relatively narrow areas. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Attention Switching and Multimedia Learning: The Impact of Executive Resources on the Integrative Comprehension of Texts and Pictures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baadte, Christiane; Rasch, Thorsten; Honstein, Helena

2015-01-01

The ability to flexibly allocate attention to goal-relevant information is pivotal for the completion of high-level cognitive processes. For instance, in comprehending illustrated texts, the reader permanently has to switch the attentional focus between the text and the corresponding picture in order to extract relevant information from both…

Assessing and Improving Performance: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Priority Setting and Resource Allocation in a Canadian Health Region

PubMed Central

Hall, William; Smith, Neale; Mitton, Craig; Urquhart, Bonnie; Bryan, Stirling

2018-01-01

Background: In order to meet the challenges presented by increasing demand and scarcity of resources, healthcare organizations are faced with difficult decisions related to resource allocation. Tools to facilitate evaluation and improvement of these processes could enable greater transparency and more optimal distribution of resources. Methods: The Resource Allocation Performance Assessment Tool (RAPAT) was implemented in a healthcare organization in British Columbia, Canada. Recommendations for improvement were delivered, and a follow up evaluation exercise was conducted to assess the trajectory of the organization’s priority setting and resource allocation (PSRA) process 2 years post the original evaluation. Results: Implementation of RAPAT in the pilot organization identified strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s PSRA process at the time of the original evaluation. Strengths included the use of criteria and evidence, an ability to reallocate resources, and the involvement of frontline staff in the process. Weaknesses included training, communication, and lack of program budgeting. Although the follow up revealed a regression from a more formal PSRA process, a legacy of explicit resource allocation was reported to be providing ongoing benefit for the organization. Conclusion: While past studies have taken a cross-sectional approach, this paper introduces the first longitudinal evaluation of PSRA in a healthcare organization. By including the strengths, weaknesses, and evolution of one organization’s journey, the authors’ intend that this paper will assist other healthcare leaders in meeting the challenges of allocating scarce resources. PMID:29626400

Resource Allocation and Seed Size Selection in Perennial Plants under Pollen Limitation.

PubMed

Huang, Qiaoqiao; Burd, Martin; Fan, Zhiwei

2017-09-01

Pollen limitation may affect resource allocation patterns in plants, but its role in the selection of seed size is not known. Using an evolutionarily stable strategy model of resource allocation in perennial iteroparous plants, we show that under density-independent population growth, pollen limitation (i.e., a reduction in ovule fertilization rate) should increase the optimal seed size. At any level of pollen limitation (including none), the optimal seed size maximizes the ratio of juvenile survival rate to the resource investment needed to produce one seed (including both ovule production and seed provisioning); that is, the optimum maximizes the fitness effect per unit cost. Seed investment may affect allocation to postbreeding adult survival. In our model, pollen limitation increases individual seed size but decreases overall reproductive allocation, so that pollen limitation should also increase the optimal allocation to postbreeding adult survival. Under density-dependent population growth, the optimal seed size is inversely proportional to ovule fertilization rate. However, pollen limitation does not affect the optimal allocation to postbreeding adult survival and ovule production. These results highlight the importance of allocation trade-offs in the effect pollen limitation has on the ecology and evolution of seed size and postbreeding adult survival in perennial plants.

Summary of Tactile User Interfaces Techniques and Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spirkovska, Lilly

2005-01-01

Mental workload can be de.ned as the ratio of demand to allocated resources. Multiple-resource theory stresses the importance of distribution of tasks and information across various human sensory channels to reduce mental workload. One sensory channel that has been of interest since the late 1800s is touch. Unlike the more typical displays that target vision or hearing, tactile displays present information to the user s sense of touch. We present a summary of different methods for tactile display, historic and more recent systems that incorporate tactile display for information presentation, advantages and disadvantages of targeting the tactile channel, and future directions in tactile display research.

Summary of Tactile User Interfaces Techniques and Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spirkovska, Lilly

2004-01-01

Mental workload can be defined as the ratio of demand to allocated resources. Multiple- resource theory stresses the importance of distribution of tasks and information across various sensory channels of the human to reduce mental workload. One sensory channel that has been of interest since the late 1800s is touch. Unlike the more typical displays that target vision or hearing, tactile displays present information to the user s sense of touch. We present a summary of different methods for tactile display; historic and more recent systems that incorporate tactile display for information presentation; advantages and disadvantages of targeting the tactile channel; and future directions in tactile display research.

Budgeting by Objectives--How Goals and Objectives, Operational Activities, and Resource Allocation Are Integrated in a Planning System. AIR 1984 Annual Forum Paper.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Capoor, Madan

The Objective-Based Assessment, Planning, and Resource Allocation System (OAPRAS) that was developed and implemented at Middlesex County College is described. The integrated self-assessment planning and budgeting system was developed in 1981. The central purpose of OAPRAS was to link resource allocation decisions to the prioritized objectives that…

Personnel Resource Allocation Strategies in a Time of Fiscal Crisis: Case Study of Elementary Schools in a California District

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sais, Melissa Marie

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to analyze human resource allocation data for all elementary schools in large urban school district to determine whether resources were allocated in ways in that research suggests can lead to improved student achievement. Data from all 46 elementary schools that participated in the study were compared to the…

Phenomenology study of HERMES ground-penetrating radar technology for detection and identification of common bridge deck features

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2001-06-01

Accurately evaluating the condition of a bridge deck over time and using this information to choose appropriate maintenance techniques has become critical for the efficient allocation of resources to bridge deck maintenance. Tomographic imaging of su...

Dynamic Resource Allocation in Conservation Planning

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-08-01

0932392 and IIS-0953413, the Caltech Center for the Mathematics of Information, and by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. We thank J. Bakker, J. Bush ...Moilanen, A.; Pakkala, T.; and Kuussaari, M. 1996. The quantitative incidence function model and persistence of an endangered butterfly metapopulation

Distraction Effects of Smoking Cues in Antismoking Messages: Examining Resource Allocation to Message Processing as a Function of Smoking Cues and Argument Strength

PubMed Central

Lee, Sungkyoung; Cappella, Joseph N.

2014-01-01

Findings from previous studies on smoking cues and argument strength in antismoking messages have shown that the presence of smoking cues undermines the persuasiveness of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs) with weak arguments. This study conceptualized smoking cues (i.e., scenes showing smoking-related objects and behaviors) as stimuli motivationally relevant to the former smoker population and examined how smoking cues influence former smokers’ processing of antismoking PSAs. Specifically, by defining smoking cues and the strength of antismoking arguments in terms of resource allocation, this study examined former smokers’ recognition accuracy, memory strength, and memory judgment of visual (i.e., scenes excluding smoking cues) and audio information from antismoking PSAs. In line with previous findings, the results of the study showed that the presence of smoking cues undermined former smokers’ encoding of antismoking arguments, which includes the visual and audio information that compose the main content of antismoking messages. PMID:25477766

Two-stage seasonal streamflow forecasts to guide water resources decisions and water rights allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Block, P. J.; Gonzalez, E.; Bonnafous, L.

2011-12-01

Decision-making in water resources is inherently uncertain producing copious risks, ranging from operational (present) to planning (season-ahead) to design/adaptation (decadal) time-scales. These risks include human activity and climate variability/change. As the risks in designing and operating water systems and allocating available supplies vary systematically in time, prospects for predicting and managing such risks become increasingly attractive. Considerable effort has been undertaken to improve seasonal forecast skill and advocate for integration to reduce risk, however only minimal adoption is evident. Impediments are well defined, yet tailoring forecast products and allowing for flexible adoption assist in overcoming some obstacles. The semi-arid Elqui River basin in Chile is contending with increasing levels of water stress and demand coupled with insufficient investment in infrastructure, taxing its ability to meet agriculture, hydropower, and environmental requirements. The basin is fed from a retreating glacier, with allocation principles founded on a system of water rights and markets. A two-stage seasonal streamflow forecast at leads of one and two seasons prescribes the probability of reductions in the value of each water right, allowing water managers to inform their constituents in advance. A tool linking the streamflow forecast to a simple reservoir decision model also allows water managers to select a level of confidence in the forecast information.

Resource Allocation in Healthcare: Implications of Models of Medicine as a Profession

PubMed Central

Kluge, Eike-Henner W.

2007-01-01

For decades, the problem of how to allocate healthcare resources in a just and equitable fashion has been the subject of concerted discussion and analysis, yet the issue has stubbornly resisted resolution. This article suggests that a major reason for this is that the discussion has focused exclusively on the nature and status of the material resources, and that the nature and role of the medical profession have been entirely ignored. Because physicians are gatekeepers to healthcare resources, their role in allocation is central from a process perspective. This article identifies 3 distinct interpretations of the nature of medicine, shows how each mandates a different method of allocation, and argues that unless an appropriate model of medicine is developed that acknowledges the valid points contained in each of the 3 approaches, the allocation problem will remain unsolvable. PMID:17435657

A mathematical modeling approach to resource allocation for railroad-highway crossing safety upgrades.

PubMed

Konur, Dinçer; Golias, Mihalis M; Darks, Brandon

2013-03-01

State Departments of Transportation (S-DOT's) periodically allocate budget for safety upgrades at railroad-highway crossings. Efficient resource allocation is crucial for reducing accidents at railroad-highway crossings and increasing railroad as well as highway transportation safety. While a specific method is not restricted to S-DOT's, sorting type of procedures are recommended by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), United States Department of Transportation for the resource allocation problem. In this study, a generic mathematical model is proposed for the resource allocation problem for railroad-highway crossing safety upgrades. The proposed approach is compared to sorting based methods for safety upgrades of public at-grade railroad-highway crossings in Tennessee. The comparison shows that the proposed mathematical modeling approach is more efficient than sorting methods in reducing accidents and severity. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Study of network resource allocation based on market and game theoretic mechanism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Yingmei; Wang, Hongwei; Wang, Gang

2004-04-01

We work on the network resource allocation issue concerning network management system function based on market-oriented mechanism. The scheme is to model the telecommunication network resources as trading goods in which the various network components could be owned by different competitive, real-world entities. This is a multidisciplinary framework concentrating on the similarity between resource allocation in network environment and the market mechanism in economic theory. By taking an economic (market-based and game theoretic) approach in routing of communication network, we study the dynamic behavior under game-theoretic framework in allocating network resources. Based on the prior work of Gibney and Jennings, we apply concepts of utility and fitness to the market mechanism with an intention to close the gap between experiment environment and real world situation.

Ethical triage and scarce resource allocation during public health emergencies: tenets and procedures.

PubMed

Kuschner, Ware G; Pollard, John B; Ezeji-Okoye, Stephen C

2007-01-01

Public health emergencies may result in mass casualties and a surge in demand for hospital-based care. Healthcare standards may need to be altered to respond to an imbalance between demands for care and resources. Clinical decisions that involve triage and scarce resource allocation may present unique ethical challenges. To address these challenges, the authors detailed tenets and procedures to guide triage and scarce resource allocation during public health emergencies. The authors propose health care organizations deploy a Triage and Scarce Resource Allocation Team to over-see and guide ethically challenging clinical decision-making during a crisis period. The authors' goal is to help healthcare organizations and clinicians balance public health responsibilities and their duty to individual patients during emergencies in as equitable and humane a manner as possible.

Decentralization and equity of resource allocation: evidence from Colombia and Chile.

PubMed Central

Bossert, Thomas J.; Larrañaga, Osvaldo; Giedion, Ursula; Arbelaez, José Jesus; Bowser, Diana M.

2003-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relation between decentralization and equity of resource allocation in Colombia and Chile. METHODS: The "decision space" approach and analysis of expenditures and utilization rates were used to provide a comparative analysis of decentralization of the health systems of Colombia and Chile. FINDINGS: Evidence from Colombia and Chile suggests that decentralization, under certain conditions and with some specific policy mechanisms, can improve equity of resource allocation. In these countries, equitable levels of per capita financial allocations at the municipal level were achieved through different forms of decentralization--the use of allocation formulae, adequate local funding choices and horizontal equity funds. Findings on equity of utilization of services were less consistent, but they did show that increased levels of funding were associated with increased utilization. This suggests that improved equity of funding over time might reduce inequities of service utilization. CONCLUSION: Decentralization can contribute to, or at least maintain, equitable allocation of health resources among municipalities of different incomes. PMID:12751417

Self-Regulated Reading in Adulthood

PubMed Central

Stine-Morrow, Elizabeth A. L.; Soederberg Miller, Lisa M.; Gagne, Danielle D.; Hertzog, Christopher

2008-01-01

Younger and older adults read a series of passages of three different genres for an immediate assessment of text memory (measured by recall and true-false questions). Word-by-word reading times were measured and decomposed into components reflecting resource allocation to particular linguistic processes using regression. Allocation to word and textbase processes showed some consistency across the three text types and was predictive of memory performance. Older adults allocated more time to word and textbase processes than the young did, but showed enhanced contextual facilitation. Structural equation modeling showed that greater resource allocation to word processes was required among readers with relatively low working memory spans and poorer verbal ability, and that greater resource allocation to textbase processes was engendered by higher verbal ability. Results are discussed in terms of a model of self-regulated language processing suggesting that older readers may compensate for processing deficiencies through greater reliance on discourse context and on increases in resource allocation that are enabled through growth in crystallized ability. PMID:18361662

Rectifying Social Inequalities in a Resource Allocation Task

PubMed Central

Elenbaas, Laura; Rizzo, Michael T.; Cooley, Shelby; Killen, Melanie

2016-01-01

To investigate whether children rectify social inequalities in a resource allocation task, participants (N = 185 African-American and European-American 5–6 year-olds and 10–11 year-olds) witnessed an inequality of school supplies between peers of different racial backgrounds. Assessments were conducted on how children judged the wrongfulness of the inequality, allocated new resources to racial ingroup and outgroup recipients, evaluated alternative allocation strategies, and reasoned about their decisions. Younger children showed ingroup favorability; their responses differed depending on whether they had witnessed their ingroup or an outgroup at a disadvantage. With age, children increasingly reasoned about the importance of equal access to school supplies and correcting past disparities. Older children judged the resource inequality negatively, allocated more resources to the disadvantaged group, and positively evaluated the actions of others who did the same, regardless of whether they had seen their racial ingroup or an outgroup at a disadvantage. Thus, balancing moral and social group concerns enabled individuals to rectify inequalities and ensure fair access to important resources regardless of racial group membership. PMID:27423813

A review of cost measures for the economic impact of domestic violence.

PubMed

Chan, Ko Ling; Cho, Esther Yin-Nei

2010-07-01

Although economic analyses of domestic violence typically guide decisions concerning resource allocation, allowing policy makers to make better informed decisions on how to prioritize and allocate scarce resources, the methods adopted to calculate domestic violence costs have varied widely from study to study. In particular, only a few studies have reviewed the cost measures of the economic impact of domestic violence. This article reviews and compares these measures by covering approaches to categorizing costs, the cost components, and ways to estimate them and recommends an integrated framework that brings the various approaches together. Some issues still need to be addressed when further developing measures such as including omitted but significant measures and expanding the time horizons of others. The implications for future study of domestic violence costs are discussed.

Stochastic Averaging for Constrained Optimization With Application to Online Resource Allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Tianyi; Mokhtari, Aryan; Wang, Xin; Ribeiro, Alejandro; Giannakis, Georgios B.

2017-06-01

Existing approaches to resource allocation for nowadays stochastic networks are challenged to meet fast convergence and tolerable delay requirements. The present paper leverages online learning advances to facilitate stochastic resource allocation tasks. By recognizing the central role of Lagrange multipliers, the underlying constrained optimization problem is formulated as a machine learning task involving both training and operational modes, with the goal of learning the sought multipliers in a fast and efficient manner. To this end, an order-optimal offline learning approach is developed first for batch training, and it is then generalized to the online setting with a procedure termed learn-and-adapt. The novel resource allocation protocol permeates benefits of stochastic approximation and statistical learning to obtain low-complexity online updates with learning errors close to the statistical accuracy limits, while still preserving adaptation performance, which in the stochastic network optimization context guarantees queue stability. Analysis and simulated tests demonstrate that the proposed data-driven approach improves the delay and convergence performance of existing resource allocation schemes.

A cognitive gateway-based spectrum sharing method in downlink round robin scheduling of LTE system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deng, Hongyu; Wu, Cheng; Wang, Yiming

2017-07-01

A key technique of LTE is how to allocate efficiently the resource of radio spectrum. Traditional Round Robin (RR) scheduling scheme may lead to too many resource residues when allocating resources. When the number of users in the current transmission time interval (TTI) is not the greatest common divisor of resource block groups (RBGs), and such a phenomenon lasts for a long time, the spectrum utilization would be greatly decreased. In this paper, a novel spectrum allocation scheme of cognitive gateway (CG) was proposed, in which the LTE spectrum utilization and CG’s throughput were greatly increased by allocating idle resource blocks in the shared TTI in LTE system to CG. Our simulation results show that the spectrum resource sharing method can improve LTE spectral utilization and increase the CG’s throughput as well as network use time.

Models of resource allocation optimization when solving the control problems in organizational systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Menshikh, V.; Samorokovskiy, A.; Avsentev, O.

2018-03-01

The mathematical model of optimizing the allocation of resources to reduce the time for management decisions and algorithms to solve the general problem of resource allocation. The optimization problem of choice of resources in organizational systems in order to reduce the total execution time of a job is solved. This problem is a complex three-level combinatorial problem, for the solving of which it is necessary to implement the solution to several specific problems: to estimate the duration of performing each action, depending on the number of performers within the group that performs this action; to estimate the total execution time of all actions depending on the quantitative composition of groups of performers; to find such a distribution of the existing resource of performers in groups to minimize the total execution time of all actions. In addition, algorithms to solve the general problem of resource allocation are proposed.

Contrarian behavior in a complex adaptive system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liang, Y.; An, K. N.; Yang, G.; Huang, J. P.

2013-01-01

Contrarian behavior is a kind of self-organization in complex adaptive systems (CASs). Here we report the existence of a transition point in a model resource-allocation CAS with contrarian behavior by using human experiments, computer simulations, and theoretical analysis. The resource ratio and system predictability serve as the tuning parameter and order parameter, respectively. The transition point helps to reveal the positive or negative role of contrarian behavior. This finding is in contrast to the common belief that contrarian behavior always has a positive role in resource allocation, say, stabilizing resource allocation by shrinking the redundancy or the lack of resources. It is further shown that resource allocation can be optimized at the transition point by adding an appropriate size of contrarians. This work is also expected to be of value to some other fields ranging from management and social science to ecology and evolution.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wu, Hao; Garzoglio, Gabriele; Ren, Shangping

FermiCloud is a private cloud developed in Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to provide elastic and on-demand resources for different scientific research experiments. The design goal of the FermiCloud is to automatically allocate resources for different scientific applications so that the QoS required by these applications is met and the operational cost of the FermiCloud is minimized. Our earlier research shows that VM launching overhead has large variations. If such variations are not taken into consideration when making resource allocation decisions, it may lead to poor performance and resource waste. In this paper, we show how we may use an VMmore » launching overhead reference model to minimize VM launching overhead. In particular, we first present a training algorithm that automatically tunes a given refer- ence model to accurately reflect FermiCloud environment. Based on the tuned reference model for virtual machine launching overhead, we develop an overhead-aware-best-fit resource allocation algorithm that decides where and when to allocate resources so that the average virtual machine launching overhead is minimized. The experimental results indicate that the developed overhead-aware-best-fit resource allocation algorithm can significantly improved the VM launching time when large number of VMs are simultaneously launched.« less

The Advantage of Standardisation as a Management Instrument in Companies

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-09-01

possible synergistic effects between different but related business units and allocate all kinds of resources in the best possible way. The management... allocating the necessary resources. This pragmatic approach corresponds to the "structure follows strategy thesis". Under the term strategy this thesis...implementation of the necessary arrangements in the functional areas as well as the allocation of existing resources. In this connection the demand for

Resource Allocation and Budgeting for the 1972-73 Mini-Schools of the Alum Rock Voucher Demonstration. Analysis of the Education Voucher Demonstration. A Working Note.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haggart, S. A.; Furry, W. S.

This Working Note documents the first year's events and outcomes in developing the budgeting system and resource allocation rules to support the Education Voucher Demonstration. The district now has systems for per pupil resource allocation and school/minischool cost center accounting. The basic voucher of $1,041 for grades 7-8, and $788 for…

Joint Rhythmic Movement Increases 4-Year-Old Children's Prosocial Sharing and Fairness Toward Peers.

PubMed

Rabinowitch, Tal-Chen; Meltzoff, Andrew N

2017-01-01

The allocation of resources to a peer partner is a prosocial act that is of fundamental importance. Joint rhythmic movement, such as occurs during musical interaction, can induce positive social experiences, which may play a role in developing and enhancing young children's prosocial skills. Here, we investigated whether joint rhythmic movement, free of musical context, increases 4-year-olds' sharing and sense of fairness in a resource allocation task involving peers. We developed a precise procedure for administering joint synchronous experience, joint asynchronous experience, and a baseline control involving no treatment. Then we tested how participants allocated resources between self and peer. We found an increase in the generous allocation of resources to peers following both synchronous and asynchronous movement compared to no treatment. At a more theoretical level, this result is considered in relation to previous work testing other aspects of child prosociality, for example, peer cooperation, which can be distinguished from judgments of fairness in resource allocation tasks. We draw a conceptual distinction between two types of prosocial behavior: resource allocation (an other-directed individual behavior) and cooperation (a goal-directed collaborative endeavor). Our results highlight how rhythmic interactions, which are prominent in joint musical engagements and synchronized activity, influence prosocial behavior between preschool peers.

Joint Rhythmic Movement Increases 4-Year-Old Children’s Prosocial Sharing and Fairness Toward Peers

PubMed Central

Rabinowitch, Tal-Chen; Meltzoff, Andrew N.

2017-01-01

The allocation of resources to a peer partner is a prosocial act that is of fundamental importance. Joint rhythmic movement, such as occurs during musical interaction, can induce positive social experiences, which may play a role in developing and enhancing young children’s prosocial skills. Here, we investigated whether joint rhythmic movement, free of musical context, increases 4-year-olds’ sharing and sense of fairness in a resource allocation task involving peers. We developed a precise procedure for administering joint synchronous experience, joint asynchronous experience, and a baseline control involving no treatment. Then we tested how participants allocated resources between self and peer. We found an increase in the generous allocation of resources to peers following both synchronous and asynchronous movement compared to no treatment. At a more theoretical level, this result is considered in relation to previous work testing other aspects of child prosociality, for example, peer cooperation, which can be distinguished from judgments of fairness in resource allocation tasks. We draw a conceptual distinction between two types of prosocial behavior: resource allocation (an other-directed individual behavior) and cooperation (a goal-directed collaborative endeavor). Our results highlight how rhythmic interactions, which are prominent in joint musical engagements and synchronized activity, influence prosocial behavior between preschool peers. PMID:28694786

Stochastic Optimization For Water Resources Allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yamout, G.; Hatfield, K.

2003-12-01

For more than 40 years, water resources allocation problems have been addressed using deterministic mathematical optimization. When data uncertainties exist, these methods could lead to solutions that are sub-optimal or even infeasible. While optimization models have been proposed for water resources decision-making under uncertainty, no attempts have been made to address the uncertainties in water allocation problems in an integrated approach. This paper presents an Integrated Dynamic, Multi-stage, Feedback-controlled, Linear, Stochastic, and Distributed parameter optimization approach to solve a problem of water resources allocation. It attempts to capture (1) the conflict caused by competing objectives, (2) environmental degradation produced by resource consumption, and finally (3) the uncertainty and risk generated by the inherently random nature of state and decision parameters involved in such a problem. A theoretical system is defined throughout its different elements. These elements consisting mainly of water resource components and end-users are described in terms of quantity, quality, and present and future associated risks and uncertainties. Models are identified, modified, and interfaced together to constitute an integrated water allocation optimization framework. This effort is a novel approach to confront the water allocation optimization problem while accounting for uncertainties associated with all its elements; thus resulting in a solution that correctly reflects the physical problem in hand.

An approximate dynamic programming approach to resource management in multi-cloud scenarios

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pietrabissa, Antonio; Priscoli, Francesco Delli; Di Giorgio, Alessandro; Giuseppi, Alessandro; Panfili, Martina; Suraci, Vincenzo

2017-03-01

The programmability and the virtualisation of network resources are crucial to deploy scalable Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services. The increasing demand of cloud services, mainly devoted to the storage and computing, requires a new functional element, the Cloud Management Broker (CMB), aimed at managing multiple cloud resources to meet the customers' requirements and, simultaneously, to optimise their usage. This paper proposes a multi-cloud resource allocation algorithm that manages the resource requests with the aim of maximising the CMB revenue over time. The algorithm is based on Markov decision process modelling and relies on reinforcement learning techniques to find online an approximate solution.

Atypical resource allocation may contribute to many aspects of autism

PubMed Central

Goldknopf, Emily J.

2013-01-01

Based on a review of the literature and on reports by people with autism, this paper suggests that atypical resource allocation is a factor that contributes to many aspects of autism spectrum conditions, including difficulties with language and social cognition, atypical sensory and attentional experiences, executive and motor challenges, and perceptual and conceptual strengths and weaknesses. Drawing upon resource theoretical approaches that suggest that perception, cognition, and action draw upon multiple pools of resources, the approach hypothesizes that compared with resources in typical cognition, resources in autism are narrowed or reduced, especially in people with strong sensory symptoms. In narrowed attention, resources are restricted to smaller areas and to fewer modalities, stages of processing, and cognitive processes than in typical cognition; narrowed resources may be more intense than in typical cognition. In reduced attentional capacity, overall resources are reduced; resources may be restricted to fewer modalities, stages of processing, and cognitive processes than in typical cognition, or the amount of resources allocated to each area or process may be reduced. Possible neural bases of the hypothesized atypical resource allocation, relations to other approaches, limitations, and tests of the hypotheses are discussed. PMID:24421760

Educational and General Expenditures of Member Colleges.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Atlanta, GA. Commission on Colleges.

This document provides normative fiscal information to assist institutions in identification of emerging trends in the allocation of financial resources. These data do not represent minimums, but are composite perspectives of the operational characteristics of all institutions in the respective enrollment categories for each level. Tables cover:…

Vocational Education in Corrections. Information Series No. 237.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Day, Sherman R.; McCane, Mel R.

Vocational education programs in America's correctional institutions have been financially handicapped, since security demands the greatest portion of resource allocations. Four eras in the development of the correctional system are generally identified: era of punishment and retribution, era of restraint or reform, era of rehabilitation and…

Planning for the 80s and Beyond.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Anza Coll., Cupertino, CA.

Designed as a guide for policy formation, program development, and resource allocation, this report identifies and evaluates future trends and their implications for California's De Anza College (DAC). Section 1 contains introductory information on the purposes, processes, and components of institutional planning at DAC. Section 2 assesses the…

76 FR 32217 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-06-03

... for an indepth understanding of individuals' attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and feelings. The... develop messages and other communications but will generally conduct further research before making important decisions, such as adopting new policies and allocating or redirecting significant resources to...

Spectrum sensing and resource allocation for multicarrier cognitive radio systems under interference and power constraints

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dikmese, Sener; Srinivasan, Sudharsan; Shaat, Musbah; Bader, Faouzi; Renfors, Markku

2014-12-01

Multicarrier waveforms have been commonly recognized as strong candidates for cognitive radio. In this paper, we study the dynamics of spectrum sensing and spectrum allocation functions in cognitive radio context using very practical signal models for the primary users (PUs), including the effects of power amplifier nonlinearities. We start by sensing the spectrum with energy detection-based wideband multichannel spectrum sensing algorithm and continue by investigating optimal resource allocation methods. Along the way, we examine the effects of spectral regrowth due to the inevitable power amplifier nonlinearities of the PU transmitters. The signal model includes frequency selective block-fading channel models for both secondary and primary transmissions. Filter bank-based wideband spectrum sensing techniques are applied for detecting spectral holes and filter bank-based multicarrier (FBMC) modulation is selected for transmission as an alternative multicarrier waveform to avoid the disadvantage of limited spectral containment of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based multicarrier systems. The optimization technique used for the resource allocation approach considered in this study utilizes the information obtained through spectrum sensing and knowledge of spectrum leakage effects of the underlying waveforms, including a practical power amplifier model for the PU transmitter. This study utilizes a computationally efficient algorithm to maximize the SU link capacity with power and interference constraints. It is seen that the SU transmission capacity depends critically on the spectral containment of the PU waveform, and these effects are quantified in a case study using an 802.11-g WLAN scenario.

Trading a Problem-solving Task

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Matsubara, Shigeo

This paper focuses on a task allocation problem, especially cases where the task is to find a solution in a search problem or a constraint satisfaction problem. If the search problem is hard to solve, a contractor may fail to find a solution. Here, the more computational resources such as the CPU time the contractor invests in solving the search problem, the more a solution is likely to be found. This brings about a new problem that a contractee has to find an appropriate level of the quality in a task achievement as well as to find an efficient allocation of a task among contractors. For example, if the contractee asks the contractor to find a solution with certainty, the payment from the contractee to the contractor may exceed the contractee's benefit from obtaining a solution, which discourages the contractee from trading a task. However, solving this problem is difficult because the contractee cannot ascertain the contractor's problem-solving ability such as the amount of available resources and knowledge (e.g. algorithms, heuristics) or monitor what amount of resources are actually invested in solving the allocated task. To solve this problem, we propose a task allocation mechanism that is able to choose an appropriate level of the quality in a task achievement and prove that this mechanism guarantees that each contractor reveals its true information. Moreover, we show that our mechanism can increase the contractee's utility compared with a simple auction mechanism by using computer simulation.

Method for optimizing resource allocation in a government organization. Ph.D. Thesis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Afarin, James

1994-01-01

The managers in Federal agencies are challenged to control the extensive activities in government and still provide high-quality products and services to the American taxpayers. Considering today's complex social and economic environment and the $3.8 billion daily cost of operating the Federal Government, it is evident that there is a need to develop decision-making tools for accurate resource allocation and total quality management. The goal of this thesis is to provide a methodical process that will aid managers in Federal Government to make budgetary decisions based on the cost of services, the agency's objectives, and the customers' perception of the agency's product. A general resource allocation procedure was developed in this study that can be applied to any government organization. A government organization, hereafter the 'organization,' is assumed to be a multidivision enterprise. This procedure was applied to a small organization for the proof of the concept. This organization is the Technical Services Directorate (TSD) at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. As part of the procedure, a nonlinear programming model was developed to account for the resources of the organization, the outputs produced by the organization, the decision-maker's views, and the customers' satisfaction with the organization. The information on the resources of the organization was acquired from current budget levels of the organization and the human resources assigned to the divisions. The outputs of the organization were defined and measured by identifying metrics that assess the outputs, the most challenging task in this study. The decision-maker's views are represented in the model as weights assigned to the various outputs and were quantified by using the analytic hierarchy process. The customer's opinions regarding the outputs of the organization were collected through questionnaires that were designed for each division individually. Following the philosophy of total quality management, information on customers' satisfaction is presented in the model as the quality of output. The model is a nonlinear one whose objective is to maximize customers' satisfaction such that the total cost of operation does not exceed the organization's budget. This model represents a structured approach or policy mechanism, at the agency level, to make capital investment decisions based on the priorities of the agency and the quality of outputs. This procedure applied to TSD resulted in a resources allocation scheme that was reasonable and acceptable to the decision-makers and, as expected, dependent on the assumptions and accuracy of the data used in the model.

Strategically Allocating Resources to Support Teaching and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lynch, Matthew

2012-01-01

As the enduring economic recession forces state and local governments to cut education budgets, astute allocation of resources is becoming more important. The author analyses three basic categories of educational resources: money, human capital, and time before moving to a discussion of resources as a component of school reform. The author…

Ground data systems resource allocation process

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berner, Carol A.; Durham, Ralph; Reilly, Norman B.

1989-01-01

The Ground Data Systems Resource Allocation Process at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides medium- and long-range planning for the use of Deep Space Network and Mission Control and Computing Center resources in support of NASA's deep space missions and Earth-based science. Resources consist of radio antenna complexes and associated data processing and control computer networks. A semi-automated system was developed that allows operations personnel to interactively generate, edit, and revise allocation plans spanning periods of up to ten years (as opposed to only two or three weeks under the manual system) based on the relative merit of mission events. It also enhances scientific data return. A software system known as the Resource Allocation and Planning Helper (RALPH) merges the conventional methods of operations research, rule-based knowledge engineering, and advanced data base structures. RALPH employs a generic, highly modular architecture capable of solving a wide variety of scheduling and resource sequencing problems. The rule-based RALPH system has saved significant labor in resource allocation. Its successful use affirms the importance of establishing and applying event priorities based on scientific merit, and the benefit of continuity in planning provided by knowledge-based engineering. The RALPH system exhibits a strong potential for minimizing development cycles of resource and payload planning systems throughout NASA and the private sector.

Spatial access to residential care resources in Beijing, China

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background As the population is ageing rapidly in Beijing, the residential care sector is in a fast expansion process with the support of the municipal government. Understanding spatial accessibility to residential care resources by older people supports the need for rational allocation of care resources in future planning. Methods Based on population data and data on residential care resources, this study uses two Geographic Information System (GIS) based methods – shortest path analysis and a two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method to analyse spatial accessibility to residential care resources. Results Spatial accessibility varies as the methods and considered factors change. When only time distance is considered, residential care resources are more accessible in the central city than in suburban and exurban areas. If care resources are considered in addition to time distance, spatial accessibility is relatively poor in the central city compared to the northeast to southeast side of the suburban and exurban areas. The resources in the northwest to southwest side of the city are the least accessible, even though several hotspots of residential care resources are located in these areas. Conclusions For policy making, it may require combining various methods for a comprehensive analysis. The methods used in this study provide tools for identifying underserved areas in order to improve equity in access to and efficiency in allocation of residential care resources in future planning. PMID:22877360

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hameed, Abdul; Khoshkbarforoushha, Alireza; Ranjan, Rajiv

In a cloud computing paradigm, energy efficient allocation of different virtualized ICT resources (servers, storage disks, and networks, and the like) is a complex problem due to the presence of heterogeneous application (e.g., content delivery networks, MapReduce, web applications, and the like) workloads having contentious allocation requirements in terms of ICT resource capacities (e.g., network bandwidth, processing speed, response time, etc.). Several recent papers have tried to address the issue of improving energy efficiency in allocating cloud resources to applications with varying degree of success. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no published literature on this subjectmore » that clearly articulates the research problem and provides research taxonomy for succinct classification of existing techniques. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to identify open challenges associated with energy efficient resource allocation. In this regard, the study, first, outlines the problem and existing hardware and software-based techniques available for this purpose. Furthermore, available techniques already presented in the literature are summarized based on the energy-efficient research dimension taxonomy. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing techniques are comprehensively analyzed against the proposed research dimension taxonomy namely: resource adaption policy, objective function, allocation method, allocation operation, and interoperability.« less

Discrete Resource Allocation in Visual Working Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barton, Brian; Ester, Edward F.; Awh, Edward

2009-01-01

Are resources in visual working memory allocated in a continuous or a discrete fashion? On one hand, flexible resource models suggest that capacity is determined by a central resource pool that can be flexibly divided such that items of greater complexity receive a larger share of resources. On the other hand, if capacity in working memory is…

The international environment UNISPACE '82 and the ITU: A relationship between orbit-spectrum resource allocation and orbital debris

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Olmstead, D.

1985-01-01

The 1985 Space WARC will examine and potentially modify the current geostationary orbit spectrum resource allocation methodology. Discussions in this international political environment could likely associate the geostationary orbital debris issue with the politicized issue of orbit spectrum allocation.

On the Allocation of Resources for Secondary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haelermans, Carla; De Witte, Kristof; Blank, Jos L. T.

2012-01-01

This paper studies the optimal allocation of resources--in terms of school management, teachers, supporting employees and materials--in secondary schools. We use a flexible budget constrained output distance function model to estimate both technical and allocative efficiency scores for 448 Dutch secondary schools between 2002 and 2007. The results…

The use of an integrated variable fuzzy sets in water resources management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Qiu, Qingtai; Liu, Jia; Li, Chuanzhe; Yu, Xinzhe; Wang, Yang

2018-06-01

Based on the evaluation of the present situation of water resources and the development of water conservancy projects and social economy, optimal allocation of regional water resources presents an increasing need in the water resources management. Meanwhile it is also the most effective way to promote the harmonic relationship between human and water. In view of the own limitations of the traditional evaluations of which always choose a single index model using in optimal allocation of regional water resources, on the basis of the theory of variable fuzzy sets (VFS) and system dynamics (SD), an integrated variable fuzzy sets model (IVFS) is proposed to address dynamically complex problems in regional water resources management in this paper. The model is applied to evaluate the level of the optimal allocation of regional water resources of Zoucheng in China. Results show that the level of allocation schemes of water resources ranging from 2.5 to 3.5, generally showing a trend of lower level. To achieve optimal regional management of water resources, this model conveys a certain degree of accessing water resources management, which prominently improve the authentic assessment of water resources management by using the eigenvector of level H.

National survey focusing on the crucial information needs of intensive care charge nurses and intensivists: same goal, different demands.

PubMed

Lundgrén-Laine, Heljä; Kontio, Elina; Kauko, Tommi; Korvenranta, Heikki; Forsström, Jari; Salanterä, Sanna

2013-01-29

Although information technology adequately supports clinical care in many intensive care units (ICUs), it provides much poorer support for the managerial information needed to coordinate multi-professional care. To gain a general view of the most crucial multi-professional information needs of ICU shift leaders a national survey was conducted, focusing on the information needs of charge nurses and intensivists. Based on our previous observation study an online survey was developed, containing 122 information need statements related to the decision-making of ICU shift leaders. Information need statements were divided into six dimensions: patient admission, organisation and management of work, allocation of staff and material resources, special treatments, and patient discharge. This survey involved all ICU shift leaders (n = 738) who worked in any of the 17 highest level ICUs for adults in university hospitals in Finland during the autumn of 2009. Both charge nurses' and intensivists' crucial information needs for care coordination were evaluated. Two hundred and fifty-seven (50%) charge nurses and 96 (43%) intensivists responded to the survey. The consistency of the survey was found to be good (Cronbach's α scores between .87-.97, with a total explanatory power of 64.53%). Altogether, 57 crucial information needs for care coordination were found; 22 of which were shared between shift leaders. The most crucial of these information needs were related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. The associations between working experience, or shift leader acting frequencies, and crucial information needs were not statistically significant. However, a statistically significant difference was found between the number of ICU beds and the ICU experience of charge nurses with information needs, under the dimension of organisation and management of work. The information needs of charge nurses and intensivists differed. Charge nurses' information needs related to care coordination, were more varied, and concerned issues at a unit level, whereas intensivists focused on direct patient care. The reliability and validity of our survey was found to be good. Our study findings show that care coordination at an ICU is a collaborative process among ICU shift leaders with multiprofessional information needs related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. Study findings can be used to identify the most crucial information needs of ICU shift leaders when new information technology is developed to support managerial decision-making during care coordination.

Dynamic versus static allocation policies in multipurpose multireservoir systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tilmant, A.; Goor, Q.; Pinte, D.; van der Zaag, P.

2007-12-01

As the competition for water is likely to increase in the near future due to socioeconomic development and population growth, water resources managers will face hard choices when allocating water between competing users. Because water is a vital resource used in multiple sectors, including the environment, the allocation is inherently a political and social process, which is likely to become increasingly scrutinized as the competition grows between the different sectors. Since markets are usually absent or ineffective, the allocation of water between competing demands is achieved administratively taking into account key objectives such as economic efficiency, equity and maintaining the ecological integrity. When crop irrigation is involved, water is usually allocated by a system of annual rights to use a fixed, static, volume of water. In a fully-allocated basin, moving from a static to a dynamic allocation process, whereby the policies are regularly updated according to the hydrologic status of the river basin, is the first step towards the development of river basin management strategies that increase the productivity of water. More specifically, in a multipurpose multireservoir system, continuously adjusting release and withdrawal decisions based on the latest hydrologic information will increase the benefits derived from the system. However, the extent to which such an adjustment can be achieved results from complex spatial and temporal interactions between the physical characteristics of the water resources system (storage, natural flows), the economic and social consequences of rationing and the impacts on natural ecosystems. The complexity of the decision-making process, which requires the continuous evaluation of numerous trade-offs, calls for the use of integrated hydrologic-economic models. This paper compares static and dynamic management approaches for a cascade of hydropower-irrigation reservoirs using stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) formulations. As its name indicates, SDDP is an extension of SDP that removes the curse of dimensionality found in discrete SDP and can therefore be used to analyze large-scale water resources systems. For the static approach, the multiobjective (irrigation-hydropower) optimization problem is solved using the constraint method, i.e. net benefits from hydropower generation are maximized and irrigation water withdrawals are additional constraints. In the dynamic approach, the SDDP model seeks to maximize the net benefits of both hydropower and irrigation crop production. A cascade of 8 reservoirs in the Turkish and Syrian parts of the Euphrates river basin is used as a case study.

Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) 7: supporting staff in evidence-based decision-making, implementation and evaluation in a local healthcare setting.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Allen, Kelly; Waller, Cara; Dyer, Tim; Brooke, Vanessa; Garrubba, Marie; Melder, Angela; Voutier, Catherine; Gust, Anthony; Farjou, Dina

2017-06-21

This is the seventh in a series of papers reporting Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. The SHARE Program was a systematic, integrated, evidence-based program for resource allocation within a large Australian health service. It aimed to facilitate proactive use of evidence from research and local data; evidence-based decision-making for resource allocation including disinvestment; and development, implementation and evaluation of disinvestment projects. From the literature and responses of local stakeholders it was clear that provision of expertise and education, training and support of health service staff would be required to achieve these aims. Four support services were proposed. This paper is a detailed case report of the development, implementation and evaluation of a Data Service, Capacity Building Service and Project Support Service. An Evidence Service is reported separately. Literature reviews, surveys, interviews, consultation and workshops were used to capture and process the relevant information. Existing theoretical frameworks were adapted for evaluation and explication of processes and outcomes. Surveys and interviews identified current practice in use of evidence in decision-making, implementation and evaluation; staff needs for evidence-based practice; nature, type and availability of local health service data; and preferred formats for education and training. The Capacity Building and Project Support Services were successful in achieving short term objectives; but long term outcomes were not evaluated due to reduced funding. The Data Service was not implemented at all. Factors influencing the processes and outcomes are discussed. Health service staff need access to education, training, expertise and support to enable evidence-based decision-making and to implement and evaluate the changes arising from those decisions. Three support services were proposed based on research evidence and local findings. Local factors, some unanticipated and some unavoidable, were the main barriers to successful implementation. All three proposed support services hold promise as facilitators of EBP in the local healthcare setting. The findings from this study will inform further exploration.

When time is more than money: the allocation of time between work and leisure in HIV-infected patients.

PubMed

Sendi, Pedram; Brouwer, Werner B F; Bucher, Heiner C; Weber, Rainer; Battegay, Manuel

2007-06-01

Time is a limited resource and individuals have to decide how many hours they should allocate to work and to leisure activities. Differences in wage rate or availability of non-labour income (financial support from families and savings) may influence how individuals allocate their time between work and leisure. An increase in wage rate may induce income effects (leisure time demanded increases) and substitution effects (leisure time demanded decreases) whereas an increase in non-labour income only induces income effects. We explored the effects of differences in wage rate and non-labour income on the allocation of time in HIV-infected patients. Patients enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study (SHCS) provided information on their time allocation, i.e. number of hours worked in 1998. A multinomial logistic regression model was used to test for income and substitution effects. Our results indicate that (i) the allocation of time in HIV-infected patients does not differ with level of education (i.e., wage rate), and that (ii) availability of non-labour income induces income effects, i.e. individuals demand more leisure time.

Resource allocation for pharmaceutical procurement in the Brazilian Unified Health System.

PubMed

Vieira, Fabiola Sulpino; Zucchi, Paola

2011-10-01

To analyze resource allocation for pharmaceutical procurement by federative entities in the Brazilian Unified Health System. The amounts allocated to purchase pharmaceuticals during 2009 in two information systems were analyzed: Siga Brasil (Follow Brazil) for national data and Sistema de Informações sobre Orçamentos Públicos em Saúde (Information System on Public Health Budgets) for states, the Federal District and municipalities data. Per capita spending and the mean and median spending were calculated by municipalities, according to region and population size. The Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated for some variables. The statistical analysis included tests of normality and multiple comparisons for differences between groups. In 2009 the total amount spent by the three spheres of government for purchase of medicines was approximately R$ 8.9 billion. States and the Federal District were the main players, accounting for 47.1% of the total amount spent in the health system. Some states had per capita spending well above the mean (R$ 22.00 per resident/year) and the median (R$ 17.00 per resident/year). There were differences in municipal spending by region. The mean per capita expenditure of municipalities with less than 5,000 residents was 3.9 times that of municipalities with over 500,000 residents. Municipalities with less than 10,000 residents had higher per capita spending than other municipalities. Economic aspects such as the scale of procurement and bargaining power may explain differences in per capita spending between federal entities, especially among municipalities. The study indicates inefficiencies in the use of financial resources to procure medicines in the Brazilian Unified Health System.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number? Policy actors' perspectives on the limits of economic evaluation as a tool for informing health care coverage decisions in Thailand

PubMed Central

Teerawattananon, Yot; Russell, Steve

2008-01-01

Background This paper presents qualitative findings from an assessment of the acceptability of using economic evaluation among policy actors in Thailand. Using cost-utility data from two economic analyses a hypothetical case scenario was created in which policy actors had to choose between two competing interventions to include in a public health benefit package. The two competing interventions, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) for gallbladder disease versus renal dialysis for chronic renal disease, were selected because they highlighted conflicting criteria influencing the allocation of healthcare resources. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 policy actors who play a major role in resource allocation decisions within the Thai healthcare system. These included 14 policy makers at the national level, five hospital directors, ten health professionals and seven academics. Results Twenty six out of 36 (72%) respondents were not convinced by the presentation of economic evaluation findings and chose not to support the inclusion of a proven cost-effective intervention (LC) in the benefit package due to ethical, institutional and political considerations. There were only six respondents, including three policy makers at national level, one hospital director, one health professional and one academic, (6/36, 17%) whose decisions were influenced by economic evaluation evidence. Conclusion This paper illustrates limitations of using economic evaluation information in decision making priorities of health care, perceived by different policy actors. It demonstrates that the concept of maximising health utility fails to recognise other important societal values in making health resource allocation decisions. PMID:18817579

An inexact mixed risk-aversion two-stage stochastic programming model for water resources management under uncertainty.

PubMed

Li, W; Wang, B; Xie, Y L; Huang, G H; Liu, L

2015-02-01

Uncertainties exist in the water resources system, while traditional two-stage stochastic programming is risk-neutral and compares the random variables (e.g., total benefit) to identify the best decisions. To deal with the risk issues, a risk-aversion inexact two-stage stochastic programming model is developed for water resources management under uncertainty. The model was a hybrid methodology of interval-parameter programming, conditional value-at-risk measure, and a general two-stage stochastic programming framework. The method extends on the traditional two-stage stochastic programming method by enabling uncertainties presented as probability density functions and discrete intervals to be effectively incorporated within the optimization framework. It could not only provide information on the benefits of the allocation plan to the decision makers but also measure the extreme expected loss on the second-stage penalty cost. The developed model was applied to a hypothetical case of water resources management. Results showed that that could help managers generate feasible and balanced risk-aversion allocation plans, and analyze the trade-offs between system stability and economy.

Introducing New Priority Setting and Resource Allocation Processes in a Canadian Healthcare Organization: A Case Study Analysis Informed by Multiple Streams Theory.

PubMed

Smith, Neale; Mitton, Craig; Dowling, Laura; Hiltz, Mary-Ann; Campbell, Matthew; Gujar, Shashi Ashok

2015-09-24

In this article, we analyze one case instance of how proposals for change to the priority setting and resource allocation (PSRA) processes at a Canadian healthcare institution reached the decision agenda of the organization's senior leadership. We adopt key concepts from an established policy studies framework - Kingdon's multiple streams theory - to inform our analysis. Twenty-six individual interviews were conducted at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, NS, Canada. Participants were asked to reflect upon the reasons leading up to the implementation of a formal priority setting process - Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA) - in the 2012/2013 fiscal year. Responses were analyzed qualitatively using Kingdon's model as a template. The introduction of PBMA can be understood as the opening of a policy window. A problem stream - defined as lack of broad engagement and information sharing across service lines in past practice - converged with a known policy solution, PBMA, which addressed the identified problems and was perceived as easy to use and with an evidence-base from past applications across Canada and elsewhere. Conditions in the political realm allowed for this intervention to proceed, but also constrained its potential outcomes. Understanding in a theoretically-informed way how change occurs in healthcare management practices can provide useful lessons to researchers and decision-makers whose aim is to help health systems achieve the most effective use of available financial resources. © 2016 by Kerman University of Medical Sciences.

Somatosensory Anticipatory Alpha Activity Increases to Suppress Distracting Input

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haegens, Saskia; Luther, Lisa; Jensen, Ole

2012-01-01

Effective processing of sensory input in daily life requires attentional selection and amplification of relevant input and, just as importantly, attenuation of irrelevant information. It has been proposed that top-down modulation of oscillatory alpha band activity (8-14 Hz) serves to allocate resources to various regions, depending on task…

Program Costing in a Community College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Balinsky, Warren; Burns, John

1975-01-01

This paper discusses improving the budget control process for a community college by use of program cost accounting. The authors suggest that adoption of such a program will improve resource allocation and program evaluation, aid planning, and better inform the public about the purposes, costs, and results of school programs. (JG)

Bayesian Decision Theory Guiding Educational Decision-Making: Theories, Models and Application

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pan, Yilin

2016-01-01

Given the importance of education and the growing public demand for improving education quality under tight budget constraints, there has been an emerging movement to call for research-informed decisions in educational resource allocation. Despite the abundance of rigorous studies on the effectiveness, cost, and implementation of educational…

Resource Allocation in Cerebral Specialization. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polson, Martha C.; And Others

A study involved the development and testing of a theoretical framework of cerebral specialization in which each hemisphere of the brain is viewed as an independent information processing system. During the study, four sets of experiments were conducted. These involved behavioral as well as electrophysiological measures. According to the…

76 FR 6802 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-02-08

... they allow for a more indepth understanding of consumers' attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and feelings... test and refine their ideas but will generally conduct further research before making important decisions, such as adopting new policies and allocating or redirecting significant resources to support...

77 FR 21985 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-04-12

... activities, and better allocate resources. Data from clinical interviews completed in 2008 were combined with the main interview short scale data to develop a predictive model that was applied to the full main sample to estimate SMI. Follow-up clinical interviews continued to be conducted with NSDUH respondents...

Linear Programming for Vocational Education Planning. Interim Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Robert C.; And Others

The purpose of the paper is to define for potential users of vocational education management information systems a quantitative analysis technique and its utilization to facilitate more effective planning of vocational education programs. Defining linear programming (LP) as a management technique used to solve complex resource allocation problems…

[Investigation of the allocation of equipment among the major research agencies for occupational health and medicine].

PubMed

Zhang, Lin; Wu, Zhi-Jun; Zhang, Shuang; Qin, Jian; Zhang, Xing

2011-08-01

To understand the allocation of instruments and equipment in major research institutions for occupational health and medicine in China. Questionnaire was designed for collecting the information of the equipment used in occupational health and medicine research. Questionnaires were distributed to 78 research agencies to investigate the situation of allocation of instrument and equipment. There was a great diversity of allocation in investigated agencies. The features in three kinds of agencies are different. The occupational health agencies in universities fit out the biological equipment in laboratories. The occupational health laboratories in CDCs were equipped with the chemical analytical devices. The institutes of occupational medicine were equipped with the clinical inspection instruments. The protocol of sharing resource and predominance complementation should be established among research institutions for occupational health and medicine in the same region or neighboring provinces.

How to Fairly Allocate Scarce Medical Resources: Ethical Argumentation under Scrutiny by Health Professionals and Lay People

PubMed Central

Rosemann, Thomas; Törnblom, Kjell Y.

2016-01-01

Background Societies are facing medical resource scarcities, inter alia due to increased life expectancy and limited health budgets and also due to temporal or continuous physical shortages of resources like donor organs. This makes it challenging to meet the medical needs of all. Ethicists provide normative guidance for how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources, but legitimate decisions require additionally information regarding what the general public considers to be fair. The purpose of this study was to explore how lay people, general practitioners, medical students and other health professionals evaluate the fairness of ten allocation principles for scarce medical resources: ‘sickest first’, ‘waiting list’, ‘prognosis’, ‘behaviour’ (i.e., those who engage in risky behaviour should not be prioritized), ‘instrumental value’ (e.g., health care workers should be favoured during epidemics), ‘combination of criteria’ (i.e., a sequence of the ‘youngest first’, ‘prognosis’, and ‘lottery’ principles), ‘reciprocity’ (i.e., those who provided services to the society in the past should be rewarded), ‘youngest first’, ‘lottery’, and ‘monetary contribution’. Methods 1,267 respondents to an online questionnaire were confronted with hypothetical situations of scarcity regarding (i) donor organs, (ii) hospital beds during an epidemic, and (iii) joint replacements. Nine allocation principles were evaluated in terms of fairness for each type of scarcity along 7-point Likert scales. The relationship between demographic factors (gender, age, religiosity, political orientation, and health status) and fairness evaluations was modelled with logistic regression. Results Medical background was a major predictor of fairness evaluations. While general practitioners showed different response patterns for all three allocation situations, the responses by lay people were very similar. Lay people rated ‘sickest first’ and ‘waiting list’ on top of all allocation principles—e.g., for donor organs 83.8% (95% CI: [81.2%–86.2%]) rated ‘sickest first’ as fair (‘fair’ is represented by scale points 5–7), and 69.5% [66.2%–72.4%] rated ‘waiting list’ as fair. The corresponding results for general practitioners: ‘prognosis’ 79.7% [74.2%–84.9%], ‘combination of criteria’ 72.6% [66.4%–78.5%], and ‘sickest first’ 74.5% [68.6%–80.1%); these were the highest-rated allocation principles for donor organs allocation. Interestingly, only 44.3% [37.7%–50.9%] of the general practitioners rated ‘instrumental value’ as fair for the allocation of hospital beds during a flu epidemic. The fairness evaluations by general practitioners obtained for joint replacements: ‘sickest first’ 84.0% [78.8%–88.6%], ‘combination of criteria’ 65.6% [59.2%–71.8%], and ‘prognosis’ 63.7% [57.1%–70.0%]. ‘Lottery’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘instrumental value’, and ‘monetary contribution’ were considered very unfair allocation principles by both groups. Medical students’ ratings were similar to those of general practitioners, and the ratings by other health professionals resembled those of lay people. Conclusions Results are partly at odds with current conclusions proposed by some ethicists. A number of ethicists reject ‘sickest first’ and ‘waiting list’ as morally unjustifiable allocation principles, whereas those allocation principles received the highest fairness endorsements by lay people and to some extent also by health professionals. Decision makers are advised to consider whether or not to give ethicists, health professionals, and the general public an equal voice when attempting to arrive at maximally endorsed allocations of scarce medical resources. PMID:27462880

A Two-Phase Model of Resource Allocation in Visual Working Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ye, Chaoxiong; Hu, Zhonghua; Li, Hong; Ristaniemi, Tapani; Liu, Qiang; Liu, Taosheng

2017-01-01

Two broad theories of visual working memory (VWM) storage have emerged from current research, a discrete slot-based theory and a continuous resource theory. However, neither the discrete slot-based theory or continuous resource theory clearly stipulates how the mental commodity for VWM (discrete slot or continuous resource) is allocated.…

Resource Allocation Procedure at Queensland University: A Dynamic Modelling Project.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Galbraith, Peter L.; Carss, Brian W.

A structural reorganization of the University of Queensland, Australia, was undertaken to promote efficient resource management, and a resource allocation model was developed to aid in policy evaluation and planning. The operation of the restructured system was based on creating five resource groups to manage the distribution of academic resources…

Alpha-Fair Resource Allocation under Incomplete Information and Presence of a Jammer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Altman, Eitan; Avrachenkov, Konstantin; Garnaev, Andrey

In the present work we deal with the concept of alpha-fair resource allocation in the situation where the decision maker (in our case, the base station) does not have complete information about the environment. Namely, we develop a concept of α-fairness under uncertainty to allocate power resource in the presence of a jammer under two types of uncertainty: (a) the decision maker does not have complete knowledge about the parameters of the environment, but knows only their distribution, (b) the jammer can come into the environment with some probability bringing extra background noise. The goal of the decision maker is to maximize the α-fairness utility function with respect to the SNIR (signal to noise-plus-interference ratio). Here we consider a concept of the expected α-fairness utility function (short-term fairness) as well as fairness of expectation (long-term fairness). In the scenario with the unknown parameters of the environment the most adequate approach is a zero-sum game since it can also be viewed as a minimax problem for the decision maker playing against the nature where the decision maker has to apply the best allocation under the worst circumstances. In the scenario with the uncertainty about jamming being in the system the Nash equilibrium concept is employed since the agents have non-zero sum payoffs: the decision maker would like to maximize either the expected fairness or the fairness of expectation while the jammer would like to minimize the fairness if he comes in on the scene. For all the plots the equilibrium strategies in closed form are found. We have shown that for all the scenarios the equilibrium has to be constructed into two steps. In the first step the equilibrium jamming strategy has to be constructed based on a solution of the corresponding modification of the water-filling equation. In the second step the decision maker equilibrium strategy has to be constructed equalizing the induced by jammer background noise.

Health information systems in the Islamic Republic of Iran: a case study in Kerman Province.

PubMed

Zolala, F

2011-09-01

Health information systems provide information for decision-making at all levels, from planning and management to evaluation of health services. Registration of vital events is the most basic level of any health information system. This case study used in-depth interviews, observations and examination of documents to explore the system of births and deaths registration in Kerman province. The findings were evaluated under 3 headings: data input, data processing and data usage. A range of problems were identified concerning legal requirements, staffing, data checking and publication of data. Different approaches are suggested to strengthen the system, such as introducing regulations to oblige different data sources to provide data and allocating sufficient resources, including human resources, and an improved technology infrastructure.

The Role of Placental Nutrient Sensing in Maternal-Fetal Resource Allocation1

PubMed Central

Díaz, Paula; Powell, Theresa L.; Jansson, Thomas

2014-01-01

ABSTRACT The placenta mediates maternal-fetal exchange and has historically been regarded as a passive conduit for nutrients. However, emerging evidence suggests that the placenta actively responds to nutritional and metabolic signals from the mother and the fetus. We propose that the placenta integrates a multitude of maternal and fetal nutritional cues with information from intrinsic nutrient-sensing signaling pathways to match fetal demand with maternal supply by regulating maternal physiology, placental growth, and nutrient transport. This process, which we have called placental nutrient sensing, ensures optimal allocation of resources between the mother and the fetus to maximize the chances for propagation of parental genes without jeopardizing maternal health. We suggest that these mechanisms have evolved because of the evolutionary pressures of maternal undernutrition, which result in decreased placental growth and down-regulation of nutrient transporters, thereby limiting fetal growth to ensure maternal survival. These regulatory loops may also function in response to maternal overnutrition, leading to increased placental growth and nutrient transport in cases of maternal obesity or gestational diabetes. Thus, placental nutrient sensing modulates maternal-fetal resource allocation to increase the likelihood of reproductive success. This model implies that the placenta plays a critical role in mediating fetal programming and determining lifelong health. PMID:25122064

Simple versus composite indicators of socioeconomic status in resource allocation formulae: the case of the district resource allocation formula in Malawi

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background The district resource allocation formula in Malawi was recently reviewed to include stunting as a proxy measure of socioeconomic status. In many countries where the concept of need has been incorporated in resource allocation, composite indicators of socioeconomic status have been used. In the Malawi case, it is important to ascertain whether there are differences between using single variable or composite indicators of socioeconomic status in allocations made to districts, holding all other factors in the resource allocation formula constant. Methods Principal components analysis was used to calculate asset indices for all districts from variables that capture living standards using data from the Malawi Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2006. These were normalized and used to weight district populations. District proportions of national population weighted by both the simple and composite indicators were then calculated for all districts and compared. District allocations were also calculated using the two approaches and compared. Results The two types of indicators are highly correlated, with a spearman rank correlation coefficient of 0.97 at the 1% level of significance. For 21 out of the 26 districts included in the study, proportions of national population weighted by the simple indicator are higher by an average of 0.6 percentage points. For the remaining 5 districts, district proportions of national population weighted by the composite indicator are higher by an average of 2 percentage points. Though the average percentage point differences are low and the actual allocations using both approaches highly correlated (ρ of 0.96), differences in actual allocations exceed 10% for 8 districts and have an average of 4.2% for the remaining 17. For 21 districts allocations based on the single variable indicator are higher. Conclusions Variations in district allocations made using either the simple or composite indicators of socioeconomic status are not statistically different to recommend one over the other. However, the single variable indicator is favourable for its ease of computation. PMID:20053274

Healthcare resource allocation decisions affecting uninsured services

PubMed Central

Harrison, Krista Lyn; Taylor, Holly A.

2017-01-01

Purpose Using the example of community access programs (CAPs), the purpose of this paper is to describe resource allocation and policy decisions related to providing health services for the uninsured in the USA and the organizational values affecting these decisions. Design/methodology/approach The study used comparative case study methodology at two geographically diverse sites. Researchers collected data from program documents, meeting observations, and interviews with program stakeholders. Findings Five resource allocation or policy decisions relevant to providing healthcare services were described at each site across three categories: designing the health plan, reacting to funding changes, and revising policies. Organizational values of access to care and stewardship most frequently affected resource allocation and policy decisions, while economic and political pressures affect the relative prioritization of values. Research limitations/implications Small sample size, the potential for social desirability or recall bias, and the exclusion of provider, member or community perspectives beyond those represented among participating board members. Practical implications Program directors or researchers can use this study to assess the extent to which resource allocation and policy decisions align with organizational values and mission statements. Social implications The description of how healthcare decisions are actually made can be matched with literature that describes how healthcare resource decisions ought to be made, in order to provide a normative grounding for future decisions. Originality/value This study addresses a gap in literature regarding how CAPs actually make resource allocation decisions that affect access to healthcare services. PMID:27934550

Managing resources in NHS dentistry: using health economics to inform commissioning decisions.

PubMed

Holmes, Richard D; Steele, Jimmy; Exley, Catherine E; Donaldson, Cam

2011-05-31

The aim of this study is to develop, apply and evaluate an economics-based framework to assist commissioners in their management of finite resources for local dental services. In April 2006, Primary Care Trusts in England were charged with managing finite dental budgets for the first time, yet several independent reports have since criticised the variability in commissioning skills within these organisations. The study will explore the views of stakeholders (dentists, patients and commissioners) regarding priority setting and the criteria used for decision-making and resource allocation. Two inter-related case studies will explore the dental commissioning and resource allocation processes through the application of a pragmatic economics-based framework known as Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis. The study will adopt an action research approach. Qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, field notes and document analysis will record the views of participants and their involvement in the research process. The first case study will be based within a Primary Care Trust where mixed methods will record the views of dentists, patients and dental commissioners on issues, priorities and processes associated with managing local dental services. A Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis framework will be applied to determine the potential value of economic principles to the decision-making process. A further case study will be conducted in a secondary care dental teaching hospital using the same approach. Qualitative data will be analysed using thematic analysis and managed using a framework approach. The recent announcement by government regarding the proposed abolition of Primary Care Trusts may pose challenges for the research team regarding their engagement with the research study. However, whichever commissioning organisations are responsible for resource allocation for dental services in the future; resource scarcity is highly likely to remain an issue. Wider understanding of the complexities of priority setting and resource allocation at local levels are important considerations in the development of dental commissioning processes, national oral health policy and the future new dental contract which is expected to be implemented in April 2014.

Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) 10: operationalising disinvestment in a conceptual framework for resource allocation.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Green, Sally; Elshaug, Adam G

2017-09-08

This is the tenth in a series of papers reporting a program of Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. After more than a decade of research, there is little published evidence of active and successful disinvestment. The paucity of frameworks, methods and tools is reported to be a factor in the lack of success. However there are clear and consistent messages in the literature that can be used to inform development of a framework for operationalising disinvestment. This paper, along with the conceptual review of disinvestment in Paper 9 of this series, aims to integrate the findings of the SHARE Program with the existing disinvestment literature to address the lack of information regarding systematic organisation-wide approaches to disinvestment at the local health service level. A framework for disinvestment in a local healthcare setting is proposed. Definitions for essential terms and key concepts underpinning the framework have been made explicit to address the lack of consistent terminology. Given the negative connotations of the word 'disinvestment' and the problems inherent in considering disinvestment in isolation, the basis for the proposed framework is 'resource allocation' to address the spectrum of decision-making from investment to disinvestment. The focus is positive: optimising healthcare, improving health outcomes, using resources effectively. The framework is based on three components: a program for decision-making, projects to implement decisions and evaluate outcomes, and research to understand and improve the program and project activities. The program consists of principles for decision-making and settings that provide opportunities to introduce systematic prompts and triggers to initiate disinvestment. The projects follow the steps in the disinvestment process. Potential methods and tools are presented, however the framework does not stipulate project design or conduct; allowing application of any theories, methods or tools at each step. Barriers are discussed and examples illustrating constituent elements are provided. The framework can be employed at network, institutional, departmental, ward or committee level. It is proposed as an organisation-wide application, embedded within existing systems and processes, which can be responsive to needs and priorities at the level of implementation. It can be used in policy, management or clinical contexts.

Scarcity, Conflict, and Equity in Allocating Public Recreation Resources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shelby, Bo; Danley, Mark

The conflict between the interests of commercial outfitters and private boaters in the use of whitewater rivers is examined. A discussion is presented on the literature on scarcity, allocation, and conflict among groups. These concepts are applied to the allocation of public resources on whitewater rivers. The conflicting interest groups are…

77 FR 42749 - Proposed Change in State Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Allocations

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-20

... Change in State Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Allocations AGENCY: Health Resources and... the State Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Block Grant allocations. Through the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), Title V MCH Block Grant...

The Oregon health insurance experiment: when limited policy resources provide research opportunities.

PubMed

Allen, Heidi; Baicker, Katherine; Taubman, Sarah; Wright, Bill; Finkelstein, Amy

2013-12-01

In 2008 Oregon allocated access to its Medicaid expansion program, Oregon Health Plan Standard, by drawing names from a waiting list by lottery. The lottery was chosen by policy makers and stakeholders as the preferred way to allocate limited resources. At the same time, it also gave rise to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: an unprecedented opportunity to do a randomized evaluation - the gold standard in medical and scientific research - of the impact of expanding Medicaid. In this article we provide historical context for Oregon's decision to conduct a lottery, discuss the importance of randomized controlled designs for policy evaluation, and describe some of the practical challenges in successfully capitalizing on the research opportunity presented by the Oregon lottery through public-academic partnerships. Since policy makers will always face tough choices about how to distribute scarce resources, we urge thoughtful consideration of the opportunities to incorporate randomization that can substantially improve the evidence available to inform policy decisions without compromising policy goals.

Challenges of Designing and Implementing High Consequence Infectious Disease Response.

PubMed

King, Joan M; Tiwari, Chetan; Mikler, Armin R; O'Neill, Martin

2018-03-19

Ebola is a high consequence infectious disease-a disease with the potential to cause outbreaks, epidemics, or pandemics with deadly possibilities, highly infectious, pathogenic, and virulent. Ebola's first reported cases in the United States in September 2014 led to the development of preparedness capabilities for the mitigation of possible rapid outbreaks, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) providing guidelines to assist public health officials in infectious disease response planning. These guidelines include broad goals for state and local agencies and detailed information concerning the types of resources needed at health care facilities. However, the spatial configuration of populations and existing health care facilities is neglected. An incomplete understanding of the demand landscape may result in an inefficient and inequitable allocation of resources to populations. Hence, this paper examines challenges in implementing CDC's guidance for Ebola preparedness and mitigation in the context of geospatial allocation of health resources and discusses possible strategies for addressing such challenges. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;page 1 of 4).

Factors that influence case managers' resource allocation decisions in pediatric home care: an ethnographic study.

PubMed

Fraser, Kimberly D; Estabrooks, Carole; Allen, Marion; Strang, Vicki

2009-03-01

Case managers make decisions that directly affect the amount and type of services home care clients receive and subsequently affect the overall available health care resources of home care programs. A recent systematic review of the literature identified significant knowledge gaps with respect to resource allocation decision-making in home care. Using Spradley's methodology, we designed an ethnographic study of a children's home care program in Western Canada. The sample included 11 case managers and program leaders. Data sources included interviews, card sorts, and participant observation over a 5-month period. Data analyses included open coding, domain, taxonomic, and componential analysis. One of the key findings was a taxonomy of factors that influence case manager resource allocation decisions. The factors were grouped into one of four main categories: system-related, home care program-related, family related, or client-related. Family related factors have not been previously reported as influencing case manager resource allocation decision-making and nor has the team's role been reported as an influencing factor. The findings of this study are examined in light of Daniels and Sabin's Accountability for Reasonableness framework, which may be useful for future knowledge development about micro-level resource allocation theory.

Physicians as gatekeepers: illness certification as a rationing device.

PubMed

Stone, D A

1979-01-01

Illness or disability is often used as an eligibility criterion by public programs that distribute money, services, privileges, and exemptions. Physicians then play a central role in the allocation process. But physicians are caught between a large pool of applicants who want some benefit, on the one hand, and an organization with limited resources to distribute, on the other hand. Three conflicts are engendered in this gatekeeping role: the tension between trusting and mistrusting information provided by the patient, the tension between erring on the false positive side and the false negative side in diagnostic decision-making, and the tension between doing everything possible for each patient and allocating limited resources among several needy clients. Several non-medical factors influence the ultimate outcome of this allocation process, which, in theory, rests on clinical decision-making: the specificity and restrictiveness of the formal definitions of illness and disability used by a program; the structure of the determination process; the overall policy of the organization on distribution of benefits; and the ability of the organization to use administrative review, direct incentives, and written standards to control the certifying behavior of physicians.

A generalized fuzzy credibility-constrained linear fractional programming approach for optimal irrigation water allocation under uncertainty

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Chenglong; Guo, Ping

2017-10-01

The vague and fuzzy parametric information is a challenging issue in irrigation water management problems. In response to this problem, a generalized fuzzy credibility-constrained linear fractional programming (GFCCFP) model is developed for optimal irrigation water allocation under uncertainty. The model can be derived from integrating generalized fuzzy credibility-constrained programming (GFCCP) into a linear fractional programming (LFP) optimization framework. Therefore, it can solve ratio optimization problems associated with fuzzy parameters, and examine the variation of results under different credibility levels and weight coefficients of possibility and necessary. It has advantages in: (1) balancing the economic and resources objectives directly; (2) analyzing system efficiency; (3) generating more flexible decision solutions by giving different credibility levels and weight coefficients of possibility and (4) supporting in-depth analysis of the interrelationships among system efficiency, credibility level and weight coefficient. The model is applied to a case study of irrigation water allocation in the middle reaches of Heihe River Basin, northwest China. Therefore, optimal irrigation water allocation solutions from the GFCCFP model can be obtained. Moreover, factorial analysis on the two parameters (i.e. λ and γ) indicates that the weight coefficient is a main factor compared with credibility level for system efficiency. These results can be effective for support reasonable irrigation water resources management and agricultural production.

Assessing and Improving Performance: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Priority Setting and Resource Allocation in a Canadian Health Region.

PubMed

Hall, William; Smith, Neale; Mitton, Craig; Urquhart, Bonnie; Bryan, Stirling

2017-08-22

In order to meet the challenges presented by increasing demand and scarcity of resources, healthcare organizations are faced with difficult decisions related to resource allocation. Tools to facilitate evaluation and improvement of these processes could enable greater transparency and more optimal distribution of resources. The Resource Allocation Performance Assessment Tool (RAPAT) was implemented in a healthcare organization in British Columbia, Canada. Recommendations for improvement were delivered, and a follow up evaluation exercise was conducted to assess the trajectory of the organization's priority setting and resource allocation (PSRA) process 2 years post the original evaluation. Implementation of RAPAT in the pilot organization identified strengths and weaknesses of the organization's PSRA process at the time of the original evaluation. Strengths included the use of criteria and evidence, an ability to reallocate resources, and the involvement of frontline staff in the process. Weaknesses included training, communication, and lack of program budgeting. Although the follow up revealed a regression from a more formal PSRA process, a legacy of explicit resource allocation was reported to be providing ongoing benefit for the organization. While past studies have taken a cross-sectional approach, this paper introduces the first longitudinal evaluation of PSRA in a healthcare organization. By including the strengths, weaknesses, and evolution of one organization's journey, the authors' intend that this paper will assist other healthcare leaders in meeting the challenges of allocating scarce resources. © 2018 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Management Tools

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1987-01-01

Manugistics, Inc. (formerly AVYX, Inc.) has introduced a new programming language for IBM and IBM compatible computers called TREES-pls. It is a resource management tool originating from the space shuttle, that can be used in such applications as scheduling, resource allocation project control, information management, and artificial intelligence. Manugistics, Inc. was looking for a flexible tool that can be applied to many problems with minimal adaptation. Among the non-government markets are aerospace, other manufacturing, transportation, health care, food and beverage and professional services.

Multiresource allocation and scheduling for periodic soft real-time applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gopalan, Kartik; Chiueh, Tzi-cker

2001-12-01

Real-time applications that utilize multiple system resources, such as CPU, disks, and network links, require coordinated scheduling of these resources in order to meet their end-to-end performance requirements. Most state-of-the-art operating systems support independent resource allocation and deadline-driven scheduling but lack coordination among multiple heterogeneous resources. This paper describes the design and implementation of an Integrated Real-time Resource Scheduler (IRS) that performs coordinated allocation and scheduling of multiple heterogeneous resources on the same machine for periodic soft real-time application. The principal feature of IRS is a heuristic multi-resource allocation algorithm that reserves multiple resources for real-time applications in a manner that can maximize the number of applications admitted into the system in the long run. At run-time, a global scheduler dispatches the tasks of the soft real-time application to individual resource schedulers according to the precedence constraints between tasks. The individual resource schedulers, which could be any deadline based schedulers, can make scheduling decisions locally and yet collectively satisfy a real-time application's performance requirements. The tightness of overall timing guarantees is ultimately determined by the properties of individual resource schedulers. However, IRS maximizes overall system resource utilization efficiency by coordinating deadline assignment across multiple tasks in a soft real-time application.

Ethical considerations in resource allocation in a cochlear implant program.

PubMed

Westerberg, Brian D; Pijl, Sipke; McDonald, Michael

2008-04-01

To review processes of resource allocation and the ethical considerations relevant to the fair allocation of a limited number of cochlear implants to increasing numbers of potential recipients. Review of relevant considerations. Tertiary referral hospital. Editorial discussion of the ethical issues of resource allocation. Heterogeneity of audiometric thresholds, self-reported disability of hearing loss, age of the potential cochlear implant recipient, cost-effectiveness, access to resources, compliance with follow-up, social support available to the recipient, social consequences of hearing impairment, and other recipient-related factors. In a publicly funded health care system, there will always be a need for decision-making processes for allocation of finite fiscal resources. All candidates for cochlear implantation deserve fair consideration. However, they are a heterogeneous group in terms of needs and expected outcomes consisting of traditional and marginal candidates, with a wide range of benefit from acoustic amplification. We argue that implant programs should thoughtfully prioritize treatment on the basis of need and potential benefit. We reject queuing on the basis of "first-come, first-served" or on the basis of perceived social worth.

What is so important about completing lives? A critique of the modified youngest first principle of scarce resource allocation.

PubMed

Gamlund, Espen

2016-04-01

Ruth Tallman has recently offered a defense of the modified youngest first principle of scarce resource allocation [1]. According to Tallman, this principle calls for prioritizing adolescents and young adults between 15-40 years of age. In this article, I argue that Tallman's defense of the modified youngest first principle is vulnerable to important objections, and that it is thus unsuitable as a basis for allocating resources. Moreover, Tallman makes claims about the badness of death for individuals at different ages, but she lacks an account of the loss involved in dying to support her claims. To fill this gap in Tallman's account, I propose a view on the badness of death that I call 'Deprivationism'. I argue that this view explains why death is bad for those who die, and that it has some advantages over Tallman's complete lives view in the context of scarce resource allocation. Finally, I consider some objections to the relevance of Deprivationism to resource allocation, and offer my responses.

Asynchronous Incremental Stochastic Dual Descent Algorithm for Network Resource Allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bedi, Amrit Singh; Rajawat, Ketan

2018-05-01

Stochastic network optimization problems entail finding resource allocation policies that are optimum on an average but must be designed in an online fashion. Such problems are ubiquitous in communication networks, where resources such as energy and bandwidth are divided among nodes to satisfy certain long-term objectives. This paper proposes an asynchronous incremental dual decent resource allocation algorithm that utilizes delayed stochastic {gradients} for carrying out its updates. The proposed algorithm is well-suited to heterogeneous networks as it allows the computationally-challenged or energy-starved nodes to, at times, postpone the updates. The asymptotic analysis of the proposed algorithm is carried out, establishing dual convergence under both, constant and diminishing step sizes. It is also shown that with constant step size, the proposed resource allocation policy is asymptotically near-optimal. An application involving multi-cell coordinated beamforming is detailed, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed algorithm.

Resource allocation and compensation during development in holometabolous insects.

PubMed

Nestel, David; Papadopoulos, Nikos T; Pascacio-Villafán, Carlos; Righini, Nicoletta; Altuzar-Molina, Alma R; Aluja, Martín

2016-12-01

We provide an extensive review on current knowledge and future research paths on the topic of resource allocation and compensation during development in holometabolous insects, emphasizing the role of resource management during development, and how compensatory mechanisms may be acting to remediate nutritional deficiencies carried over from earlier stages of development. We first review resource allocation in "open" and "closed" developmental stages and then move on to the topic of modelling resource allocation and its trade-offs. In doing so, we review novel methodological developments such as response-surface methods and mixture experiments as well as nutritional geometry. We also dwell on the fascinating topic of compensatory physiology and behavior. We finish by discussing future research paths, among them the emerging field of nutrigenomics and gut microbiome, which will shed light into the yet poorly understood role of the symbiotic microbiota in nutrient compensation or assimilation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Arithmetic and algebraic problem solving and resource allocation: the distinct impact of fluid and numerical intelligence.

PubMed

Dix, Annika; van der Meer, Elke

2015-04-01

This study investigates cognitive resource allocation dependent on fluid and numerical intelligence in arithmetic/algebraic tasks varying in difficulty. Sixty-six 11th grade students participated in a mathematical verification paradigm, while pupil dilation as a measure of resource allocation was collected. Students with high fluid intelligence solved the tasks faster and more accurately than those with average fluid intelligence, as did students with high compared to average numerical intelligence. However, fluid intelligence sped up response times only in students with average but not high numerical intelligence. Further, high fluid but not numerical intelligence led to greater task-related pupil dilation. We assume that fluid intelligence serves as a domain-general resource that helps to tackle problems for which domain-specific knowledge (numerical intelligence) is missing. The allocation of this resource can be measured by pupil dilation. Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Perceptions and Attitudes of Health Professionals in Kenya on National Health Care Resource Allocation Mechanisms: A Structural Equation Modeling

PubMed Central

Owili, Patrick Opiyo; Hsu, Yi-Hsin Elsa; Chern, Jin-Yuan; Chiu, Chiung-Hsuan Megan; Wang, Bill; Huang, Kuo-Cherh; Muga, Miriam Adoyo

2015-01-01

Background Health care resource allocation is key towards attaining equity in the health system. However, health professionals’ perceived impact and attitude towards health care resource allocation in Sub-Saharan Africa is unknown; furthermore, they occupy a position which makes them notice the impact of different policies in their health system. This study explored perceptions and attitudes of health professionals in Kenya on health care resource allocation mechanism. Method We conducted a survey of a representative sample of 341 health professionals in Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital from February to April 2012, consisting of over 3000 employees. We assessed health professionals’ perceived impact and attitudes on health care resource allocation mechanism in Kenya. We used structural equation modeling and applied a Confirmatory Factor Analysis using Robust Maximum Likelihood estimation procedure to test the hypothesized model. Results We found that the allocation mechanism was negatively associated with their perceived positive impact (-1.04, p < .001), health professionals’ satisfaction (-0.24, p < .01), and professionals’ attitudes (-1.55, p < .001) while it was positively associated with perceived negative impact (1.14, p < .001). Perceived positive impact of the allocation mechanism was negatively associated with their overall satisfaction (-0.08) and attitude (-0.98) at p < .001, respectively. Furthermore, overall satisfaction was negatively associated with attitude (-1.10, p <.001). On the other hand, perceived negative impact of the allocation was positively associated with overall satisfaction (0.29, p <.001) but was not associated with attitude. Conclusion The result suggests that health care resource allocation mechanism has a negative effect towards perceptions, attitudes and overall satisfaction of health professionals who are at the frontline in health care. These findings can serve as a crucial reference for policymakers as the Kenyan health system move towards devolving the system of governance. PMID:26039053

The planning cycle.

PubMed

Johnson, William

2005-01-01

Information technology planning can be described as a continuous cyclical process composed of three phases whose primary purpose is optimum allocation of scarce resources. In the assessment phase, planners assess user needs, environmental factors, business objectives, and IT infrastructure needs to develop IT projects that address needs in each of these areas. A major goal of this phase is to develop a broad IT inventory. The prioritization phase seeks to ensure optimum allocation of scarce resources by prioritizing ITprojects based on: Costs--total life cycle costs. Benefits--both quantitative and non-quantitative, including support for the organization's strategic business objectives. Risks--subjective assessments of technological and non-technological risks. Implementation requirements--time and personnel requirements to implement the system. The scheduling phase incorporates sequencing considerations, personnel availability, and budgetary constraints to produce an IT plan in which project priorities are adjusted to meet organizational realities.

Criteria-Based Resource Allocation: A Tool to Improve Public Health Impact.

PubMed

Graham, J Ross; Mackie, Christopher

2016-01-01

Resource allocation in local public health (LPH) has been reported as a significant challenge for practitioners and a Public Health Services and Systems Research priority. Ensuring available resources have maximum impact on community health and maintaining public confidence in the resource allocation process are key challenges. A popular strategy in health care settings to address these challenges is Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA). This case study used PBMA in an LPH setting to examine its appropriateness and utility. The criteria-based resource allocation process PBMA was implemented to guide the development of annual organizational budget in an attempt to maximize the impact of agency resources. Senior leaders and managers were surveyed postimplementation regarding process facilitators, challenges, and successes. Canada's largest autonomous LPH agency. PBMA was used to shift 3.4% of the agency budget from lower-impact areas (through 34 specific disinvestments) to higher-impact areas (26 specific reinvestments). Senior leaders and managers validated the process as a useful approach for improving the public health impact of agency resources. However, they also reported the process may have decreased frontline staff confidence in senior leadership. In this case study, PBMA was used successfully to reallocate a sizable portion of an LPH agency's budget toward higher-impact activities. PBMA warrants further study as a tool to support optimal resource allocation in LPH settings.

Allocation of health resources according to the type and size of Iranian governmental hospitals.

PubMed

Hassani, Sa; Abolhallaje, M; Inanlo, S; Hosseini, H; Pourmohammadi, K; Bastani, P; Ramezanian, M; Marnani, A Barati

2013-01-01

Due to consuming about 50%-80% of health resources, hospitals are the greatest and costly operational units in Iranian Health system. so allocation of resources specially human and space resources as the most expensive ones is really important for further controlling of costs, analysis of costs and making suitable policies for increasing the profitability and allocation of resources and improvement of quality. This paper intends to describe and analyze any allocation of resources in 530 university hospitals in Iran. The final goal of this research is to provide a data bank according which there is a basis for more scientific budget allocation of state's hospitals from the size and type of application points of view. The relevant index of person to bed was 2.04 for human resources. All hospitals more than 300 beds are located in benefiting areas from which 17 cases are educational and 2 cases are therapeutic. This is necessary to mention that the rate of management group forces to total personnel at deprived areas is about 2.5% more than benefiting areas. Because 60-80% of hospital costs are applied for human forces, all managers of hospitals are obliged to revise their policies in attraction and employment of human force in order to benefit from such a valuable resource and prevent from expensive costs. So any employment of personnel should be based upon real needs of hospital.

Optimal Resource Allocation under Fair QoS in Multi-tier Server Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Akai, Hirokazu; Ushio, Toshimitsu; Hayashi, Naoki

Recent development of network technology realizes multi-tier server systems, where several tiers perform functionally different processing requested by clients. It is an important issue to allocate resources of the systems to clients dynamically based on their current requests. On the other hand, Q-RAM has been proposed for resource allocation in real-time systems. In the server systems, it is important that execution results of all applications requested by clients are the same QoS(quality of service) level. In this paper, we extend Q-RAM to multi-tier server systems and propose a method for optimal resource allocation with fairness of the QoS levels of clients’ requests. We also consider an assignment problem of physical machines to be sleep in each tier sothat the energy consumption is minimized.

Children Rectify Inequalities for Disadvantaged Groups

PubMed Central

Elenbaas, Laura; Killen, Melanie

2016-01-01

Children’s decisions regarding the allocation of societal resources in the context of preexisting inequalities were investigated. African-American and European-American children ages 5–6 years (n = 91) and 10–11 years (n = 94) judged the acceptability of a medical resource inequality on the basis of race, allocated medical supplies, evaluated different resource allocation strategies, and completed a measure of status awareness based on race. With age, children were increasingly aware of wealth status disparities between African-Americans and European-Americans, and judged a medical resource inequality between groups more negatively. Further, with age, children rectified the resource inequality over perpetuating it, but only when African-American children were disadvantaged. With age, children also referenced rights when reasoning about their judgments concerning the disadvantaged African-American group. When European-American children were disadvantaged, children did not systematically allocate more resources to one group over another. The results are discussed in terms of social inequalities, disadvantaged status, moral judgments, and intergroup attitudes. PMID:27455190

Flexibility of resource allocation in a hermaphroditic-gynomonoecious herb through deployment of female and male resources in perfect flowers.

PubMed

Mamut, Jannathan; Xiong, Ying-Ze; Tan, Dun-Yan; Huang, Shuang-Quan

2017-03-01

It has been hypothesized that two flower types permit flexible allocation of resources to female and male functions, yet empirical evidence for the sex-allocation hypothesis remains scarce in gynomonoecious species. To characterize resource allocation to pistillate and perfect flowers and allocation of perfect flowers between gynomonoecious and hermaphroditic individuals, we examined the flexibility and whether female-biased allocation increases with plant size in the hermaphroditic-gynomonoecious herb Eremurus anisopterus . Frequency of gynomonoecious individuals, flower production, and plant size were investigated in different populations. Floral allocation was compared among the three flower types of E. anisopterus . Frequency of gynomonoecious plants varied from 2-17% in nine populations. Only larger plants produced female flowers at the bottom of racemes. Both female and perfect flower production tended to increase proportionately with plant size in gynomonoecious individuals. Female flowers did not produce less biomass than perfect flowers from hermaphroditic or gynomonoecious plants. However, both female and perfect flowers from gynomonoecious individuals had lighter stamen mass, but larger pistil mass, than perfect flowers from hermaphrodites. Although the prediction of an increase in female flower number with plant size was not observed in E. anisopterus , the flexibility of sex allocation in gynomonoecious species was confirmed in that gynomonoecious individuals had a female-biased floral allocation compared to hermaphroditic individuals. Such comparisons of gynomonoecious to hermaphroditic individuals permit us to unveil a sexual adjustment strategy: flexibility of sexual investments within plants. © 2017 Botanical Society of America.

The Health Resources Allocation Model (HRAM) for the 21st century.

PubMed

Maire, Nicolas; Hegnauer, Michael; Nguyen, Dana; Godelmann, Lucas; Hoffmann, Axel; de Savigny, Don; Tanner, Marcel

2012-05-01

The Health Resources Allocation Model (HRAM) is an eLearning tool for health cadres and scientists introducing basic concepts of sub-national, rational district-based health planning and systems thinking under resources constraint. HRAM allows the evaluation of resource allocation strategies in relation to key outcome measures such as coverage, equity of services achieved and number of deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) prevented. In addition, the model takes into account geographical and demographic characteristics and populations' health seeking behaviour. It can be adapted to different socio-ecological and health system settings.

From Districts to Schools: The Distribution of Resources across Schools in Big City School Districts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubenstein, Ross; Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Stiefel, Leanna; Amor, Hella Bel Hadj

2007-01-01

While the distribution of resources across school districts is well studied, relatively little attention has been paid to how resources are allocated to individual schools inside those districts. This paper explores the determinants of resource allocation across schools in large districts based on factors that reflect differential school costs or…

Tailoring Software for Multiple Processor Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

1982-10-01

resource management decisions . Despite the lack of programming support, the use of multiple processor systems has grown sub- -stantially. Software has...making resource management decisions . Specifically, program- 1 mers need not allocate specific hardware resources to individual program components...Instead, such allocation decisions are automatically made based on high-level resource directives stated by ap- plication programmers, where each directive

Improving the Success of Strategic Management Using Big Data.

PubMed

Desai, Sapan S; Wilkerson, James; Roberts, Todd

2016-01-01

Strategic management involves determining organizational goals, implementing a strategic plan, and properly allocating resources. Poor access to pertinent and timely data misidentifies clinical goals, prevents effective resource allocation, and generates waste from inaccurate forecasting. Loss of operational efficiency diminishes the value stream, adversely impacts the quality of patient care, and hampers effective strategic management. We have pioneered an approach using big data to create competitive advantage by identifying trends in clinical practice, accurately anticipating future needs, and strategically allocating resources for maximum impact.

Regional Disparities in the Allocation of China's Higher Education Resources from the Perspective of Equity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wei, Bao

2012-01-01

This article attempts to analyze the changing circumstances of the regional disparities in the allocation of China's higher educational resources before and after the increase in college enrollments, as well as the mechanisms that have affected these circumstances. The conclusions are that regional disparities in the allocation of China's funding…

Resources for health promotion: rhetoric, research and reality.

PubMed

Minke, Sharlene Wolbeck; Raine, Kim D; Plotnikoff, Ronald C; Anderson, Donna; Khalema, Ernest; Smith, Cynthia

2007-01-01

Canadian political discourse supports the importance of health promotion and advocates the allocation of health resources to health promotion. Furthermore, the current literature frequently identifies financial and human resources as important elements of organizational capacity for health promotion. In the Alberta Heart Health Project (AHHP), we sought to learn if the allocation of health resources in a regionalized health system was congruent with the espoused support for health promotion in Alberta, Canada. The AHHP used a mixed method approach in a time series design. Participants were drawn from multiple organizational levels (i.e., service providers, managers, board members) across all Regional Health Authorities (RHAs). Data were triangulated through multiple collection methods, primarily an organizational capacity survey, analysis of organizational documents, focus groups, and personal interviews. Analysis techniques were drawn from quantitative (i.e., frequency distributions, ANOVAs) and qualitative (i.e., content and thematic analysis) approaches. In most cases, small amounts (<5%) of financial resources were allocated to health promotion in RHAs' core budgets. Respondents reported seeking multiple sources of public health financing to support their health promotion initiatives. Human resources for health promotion were characterized by fragmented responsibilities and short-term work. Furthermore, valuable human resources were consumed in ongoing searches for funding that typically covered short time periods. Resource allocations to health promotion in Alberta RHAs are inconsistent with the current emphasis on health promotion as an organizational priority. Inadequate and unstable funding erodes the RHAs' capacity for health promotion. Sustainable health promotion calls for the assured allocation of adequate, sustainable financial resources.

Constraint monitoring in TOSCA

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Beck, Howard

1992-01-01

The Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) deals with the allocation of resources over time to factory operations. Allocations are subject to various constraints (e.g., production precedence relationships, factory capacity constraints, and limits on the allowable number of machine setups) which must be satisfied for a schedule to be valid. The identification of constraint violations and the monitoring of constraint threats plays a vital role in schedule generation in terms of the following: (1) directing the scheduling process; and (2) informing scheduling decisions. This paper describes a general mechanism for identifying constraint violations and monitoring threats to the satisfaction of constraints throughout schedule generation.

[Web-based evidence of treatment capacity. An instrument for optimizing the interface between prehospital and hospital management].

PubMed

Schweigkofler, U; Reimertz, C; Auhuber, T C; Jung, H G; Gottschalk, R; Hoffmann, R

2011-10-01

The outcome of injured patients depends on intrastractural circumstances as well as on the time until clinical treatment begins. A rapid patient allocation can only be achieved occur if informations about the care capacity status of the medical centers are available. Considering this an improvement at the interface prehospital/clinical care seems possible. In 2010 in Frankfurt am Main the announcement of free capacity (positive proof) was converted to a web-based negative proof of interdisciplinary care capacities. So-called closings are indicated in a web portal, recorded centrally and registered at the local health authority and the management of participating hospitals. Analyses of the allocations to hospitals of all professional disciplines from the years 2009 and 2010 showed an optimized use of the resources. A decline of the allocations by the order from 261 to 0 could be reached by the introduction of the clear care capacity proof system. The health authorities as the regulating body rarely had to intervene (decline from 400 to 7 cases). Surgical care in Frankfurt was guaranteed at any time by one of the large medical centers. The web-based care capacity proof system introduced in 2010 does justice to the demand for optimum resource use on-line. Integration of this allocation system into the developing trauma networks can optimize the process for a quick and high quality care of severely injured patients. It opens new approaches to improve allocation of high numbers of casualties in disaster medicine.

A Greedy Double Auction Mechanism for Grid Resource Allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ding, Ding; Luo, Siwei; Gao, Zhan

To improve the resource utilization and satisfy more users, a Greedy Double Auction Mechanism(GDAM) is proposed to allocate resources in grid environments. GDAM trades resources at discriminatory price instead of uniform price, reflecting the variance in requirements for profits and quantities. Moreover, GDAM applies different auction rules to different cases, over-demand, over-supply and equilibrium of demand and supply. As a new mechanism for grid resource allocation, GDAM is proved to be strategy-proof, economically efficient, weakly budget-balanced and individual rational. Simulation results also confirm that GDAM outperforms the traditional one on both the total trade amount and the user satisfaction percentage, specially as more users are involved in the auction market.

Allocative and implementation efficiency in HIV prevention and treatment for people who inject drugs.

PubMed

Benedikt, Clemens; Kelly, Sherrie L; Wilson, David; Wilson, David P

2016-12-01

Estimated global new HIV infections among people who inject drugs (PWID) remained stable over the 2010-2015 period and the target of a 50% reduction over this period was missed. To achieve the 2020 UNAIDS target of reducing adult HIV infections by 75% compared to 2010, accelerated action in scaling up HIV programs for PWID is required. In a context of diminishing external support to HIV programs in countries where most HIV-affected PWID live, it is essential that available resources are allocated and used as efficiently as possible. Allocative and implementation efficiency analysis methods were applied. Optima, a dynamic, population-based HIV model with an integrated program and economic analysis framework was applied in eight countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA). Mathematical analyses established optimized allocations of resources. An implementation efficiency analysis focused on examining technical efficiency, unit costs, and heterogeneity of service delivery models and practices. Findings from the latest reported data revealed that countries allocated between 4% (Bulgaria) and 40% (Georgia) of total HIV resources to programs targeting PWID - with a median of 13% for the eight countries. When distributing the same amount of HIV funding optimally, between 9% and 25% of available HIV resources would be allocated to PWID programs with a median allocation of 16% and, in addition, antiretroviral therapy would be scaled up including for PWID. As a result of optimized allocations, new HIV infections are projected to decline by 3-28% and AIDS-related deaths by 7-53% in the eight countries. Implementation efficiencies identified involve potential reductions in drug procurement costs, service delivery models, and practices and scale of service delivery influencing cost and outcome. A high level of implementation efficiency was associated with high volumes of PWID clients accessing a drug harm reduction facility. A combination of optimized allocation of resources, improved implementation efficiency and increased investment of non-HIV resources is required to enhance coverage and improve outcomes of programs for PWID. Increasing efficiency of HIV programs for PWID is a key step towards avoiding implicit rationing and ensuring transparent allocation of resources where and how they would have the largest impact on the health of PWID, and thereby ensuring that funding spent on PWID becomes a global best buy in public health. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Working Memory in the Prefrontal Cortex

PubMed Central

Funahashi, Shintaro

2017-01-01

The prefrontal cortex participates in a variety of higher cognitive functions. The concept of working memory is now widely used to understand prefrontal functions. Neurophysiological studies have revealed that stimulus-selective delay-period activity is a neural correlate of the mechanism for temporarily maintaining information in working memory processes. The central executive, which is the master component of Baddeley’s working memory model and is thought to be a function of the prefrontal cortex, controls the performance of other components by allocating a limited capacity of memory resource to each component based on its demand. Recent neurophysiological studies have attempted to reveal how prefrontal neurons achieve the functions of the central executive. For example, the neural mechanisms of memory control have been examined using the interference effect in a dual-task paradigm. It has been shown that this interference effect is caused by the competitive and overloaded recruitment of overlapping neural populations in the prefrontal cortex by two concurrent tasks and that the information-processing capacity of a single neuron is limited to a fixed level, can be flexibly allocated or reallocated between two concurrent tasks based on their needs, and enhances behavioral performance when its allocation to one task is increased. Further, a metamemory task requiring spatial information has been used to understand the neural mechanism for monitoring its own operations, and it has been shown that monitoring the quality of spatial information represented by prefrontal activity is an important factor in the subject's choice and that the strength of spatially selective delay-period activity reflects confidence in decision-making. Although further studies are needed to elucidate how the prefrontal cortex controls memory resource and supervises other systems, some important mechanisms related to the central executive have been identified. PMID:28448453

Fair reckoning: a qualitative investigation of responses to an economic health resource allocation survey.

PubMed

Giacomini, Mita; Hurley, Jeremiah; DeJean, Deirdre

2014-04-01

To investigate how participants in an economic resource allocation survey construct notions of fairness. Qualitative interview study guided by interpretive grounded theory methods. Qualitative interviews were conducted with volunteer university- (n=39) and community-based (n =7) economic survey participants. INTERVENTION OR MAIN VARIABLES STUDIED: We explored how participants constructed meanings to guide or explain fair survey choices, focusing on rationales, imagery and additional desired information not provided in the survey scenarios. Data were transcribed and coded into qualitative categories. Analysis iterated with data collection iterated through three waves of interviews. Participants compared the survey dilemmas to domains outside the health system. Most compared them with other micro-level, inter-personal sharing tasks. Participants raised several fairness-relevant factors beyond need or capacity to benefit. These included age, weight, poverty, access to other options and personal responsibility for illness; illness duration, curability or seriousness; life expectancy; possibilities for sharing; awareness of other's needs; and ability to explain allocations to those affected. They also articulated a fairness principle little considered by equity theories: that everybody must get something and nobody should get nothing. Lay criteria for judging fairness are myriad. Simple scenarios may be used to investigate lay commitments to abstract principles. Although principles are the focus of analysis and inference, participants may solve simplified dilemmas by imputing extraneous features to the problem or applying unanticipated principles. These possibilities should be taken into account in the design of resource allocation surveys eliciting the views of the public. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Fair reckoning: a qualitative investigation of responses to an economic health resource allocation survey

PubMed Central

Giacomini, Mita; Hurley, Jeremiah; DeJean, Deirdre

2012-01-01

Abstract Objective  To investigate how participants in an economic resource allocation survey construct notions of fairness. Design  Qualitative interview study guided by interpretive grounded theory methods. Setting and participants  Qualitative interviews were conducted with volunteer university‐ (n = 39) and community‐based (n = 7) economic survey participants. Intervention or main variables studied  We explored how participants constructed meanings to guide or explain fair survey choices, focusing on rationales, imagery and additional desired information not provided in the survey scenarios. Main outcome measures  Data were transcribed and coded into qualitative categories. Analysis iterated with data collection iterated through three waves of interviews. Results  Participants compared the survey dilemmas to domains outside the health system. Most compared them with other micro‐level, inter‐personal sharing tasks. Participants raised several fairness‐relevant factors beyond need or capacity to benefit. These included age, weight, poverty, access to other options and personal responsibility for illness; illness duration, curability or seriousness; life expectancy; possibilities for sharing; awareness of other’s needs; and ability to explain allocations to those affected. They also articulated a fairness principle little considered by equity theories: that everybody must get something and nobody should get nothing. Discussion and conclusions  Lay criteria for judging fairness are myriad. Simple scenarios may be used to investigate lay commitments to abstract principles. Although principles are the focus of analysis and inference, participants may solve simplified dilemmas by imputing extraneous features to the problem or applying unanticipated principles. These possibilities should be taken into account in the design of resource allocation surveys eliciting the views of the public. PMID:22390183

43 CFR 3277.11 - What records must I keep available for inspection?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... operation of your utilization facility, royalty and production meters, and safety training available for BLM inspection for a period of 6 years following the time the records and information are created. (b) This... needs them to determine: (1) Resource production to a utilization facility; or (2) The allocation of...

A New View of Institutions, Human Capital, and Market Standardisation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rodriguez, Jacob P.; Loomis, Steven R.

2007-01-01

This paper argues that the rule-making function of institutions introduces an information distortion into markets--economic, political, and cultural--that changes the rational pattern of resource allocation. As markets expand, this distortion raises the price of individual talent and skill development in production. It leads to a public-private…

Children's Social Category-Based Giving and Its Correlates: Expectations and Preferences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Renno, Maggie P.; Shutts, Kristin

2015-01-01

Do young children use information about gender and race to guide their prosocial gestures, and to what extent is children's selective prosociality related to other intergroup phenomena? Two studies tested 3- to 5-year-old children's allocation of resources to, social preferences for, and expectations about the behaviors of unfamiliar people who…

Using Probabilistic Information in Solving Resource Allocation Problems for a Decentralized Firm

DTIC Science & Technology

1978-09-01

deterministic equivalent form of HIQ’s problem (5) by an approach similar to the one used in stochastic programming with simple recourse. See Ziemba [38) or, in...1964). 38. Ziemba , W.T., "Stochastic Programs with Simple Recourse," Technical Report 72-15, Stanford University, Department of Operations Research

Estimating the Difference between Published and Unpublished Effect Sizes: A Meta-Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polanin, Joshua R.; Tanner-Smith, Emily E.; Hennessy, Emily A.

2016-01-01

Practitioners and policymakers rely on meta-analyses to inform decision making around the allocation of resources to individuals and organizations. It is therefore paramount to consider the validity of these results. A well-documented threat to the validity of research synthesis results is the presence of publication bias, a phenomenon where…

Estimating the Difference between Published and Unpublished Effect Sizes: A Meta-Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polanin, Joshua R.; Tanner-Smith, Emily E.; Hennessy, Emily A.

2016-01-01

Practitioners and policymakers rely on meta-analyses to inform decision-making around the allocation of resources to individuals and organizations. It is therefore paramount to consider the validity of these results. A well-documented threat to the validity of research synthesis results is the presence of publication bias, a phenomenon where…

Conflicting Pressures That Impinge Upon the Operational Effectiveness of Institutional Researchers: Challenges to the Practitioner.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gubasta, Joseph L.

The numerous issues and problems facing college and university decisionmakers and the ever increasing information needs of external agency representatives place conflicting pressures on institutional research personnel, forcing them to make difficult decisions regarding the allocation of their resources. Outlined are several such pressures. It is…

Tracking Juvenile Recidivists: Three Options for Creating Statewide, Longitudinal Records of Juvenile Offenders.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rooney, Teresa L.

This document describes three options for a statewide statistical system for tracking recidivism of juvenile delinquents placed outside their homes in treatment programs. The information is intended for use by the state in allocating resources. The options described involve potential use of juvenile court records, placement data, and/or…

A neotropical migratory bird prioritization for National Forests and Grasslands

Treesearch

Dick Roth; Richard Peterson

1997-01-01

The Rocky Mountain Region of the USDA Forest Service provides nesting habitat for 146 species of neotropical migratory birds. Interactive, prioritization databases were developed for each National Forest and National Grassland in the Region to assist land managers in making informed decisions about resource allocations. The data was processed using Paradox software....

Satisficing in Split-Second Decision Making Is Characterized by Strategic Cue Discounting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oh, Hanna; Beck, Jeffrey M.; Zhu, Pingping; Sommer, Marc A.; Ferrari, Silvia; Egner, Tobias

2016-01-01

Much of our real-life decision making is bounded by uncertain information, limitations in cognitive resources, and a lack of time to allocate to the decision process. It is thought that humans overcome these limitations through "satisficing," fast but "good-enough" heuristic decision making that prioritizes some sources of…

77 FR 34959 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-06-12

..., direct program activities, and better allocate resources. Data from clinical interviews completed in 2008 were combined with the main interview short scale data to develop a predictive model that was applied to the full main sample to estimate SMI. Follow-up clinical interviews continued to be conducted with...

Institutional Resource Allocation, Student Engagement, and Student Satisfaction at Ontario Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malik, Alana Jayne

2010-01-01

This study examined the relationship between institutional expenditures in student services, levels of student engagement, and measures of student satisfaction across 18 (out of 19) universities in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Information regarding these variables for each institution was assembled from four extant datasets: (a) the "2006…

Feature Selection with Missing Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sarkar, Saurabh

2013-01-01

In the modern world information has become the new power. An increasing amount of efforts are being made to gather data, resources being allocated, time being invested and tools being developed. Data collection is no longer a myth; however, it remains a great challenge to create value out of the enormous data that is being collected. Data modeling…

Money, Time and Learning. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, J. Alan; Kemmerer, Frances

Chapter 1 of this study discusses sources of educational inequality in terms of criteria for resource allocation, definitions of educational equity, and equity and efficiency in the classroom. Following the second chapter's review of literature on how resources affect learning, chapter 3 offers a theory of resource allocation education. The fourth…

Children's Allocation of Resources in Social Dominance Situations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charafeddine, Rawan; Mercier, Hugo; Clément, Fabrice; Kaufmann, Laurence; Reboul, Anne; Van der Henst, Jean-Baptiste

2016-01-01

Two experiments with preschoolers (36 to 78 months) and 8-year-old children (Experiment 1, N = 173; Experiment 2, N = 132) investigated the development of children's resource distribution in dominance contexts. On the basis of the distributive justice literature, 2 opposite predictions were tested. Children could match resource allocation with the…

Multi-Agent Coordination Techniques for Naval Tactical Combat Resources Management

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-07-01

resource coordination and cooperation problems. The combat resource allocation planning problem is treated in the companion report [2]. 2.3 Resource...report focuses on the resource coordination problem, while allocation algorithms are discussed in the companion report [2]. First, coordination in...classification of each should be indicated as with the title.) Canada’s Leader in Defence and National Security Science and Technology Chef de file au Canada en

Market failure, policy failure and other distortions in chronic disease markets

PubMed Central

Watts, Jennifer J; Segal, Leonie

2009-01-01

Background The increasing prevalence of chronic disease represents a significant burden on most health systems. This paper explores the market failures and policy failures that exist in the management of chronic diseases. Discussion There are many sources of market failure in health care that undermine the efficiency of chronic disease management. These include incomplete information as well as information asymmetry between providers and consumers, the effect of externalities on consumer behaviour, and the divergence between social and private time preference rates. This has seen government and policy interventions to address both market failures and distributional issues resulting from the inability of private markets to reach an efficient and equitable distribution of resources. However, these have introduced a series of policy failures such as distorted re-imbursement arrangements across modalities and delivery settings. Summary The paper concludes that market failure resulting from a preference of individuals for 'immediate gratification' in the form of health care and disease management, rather than preventative services, where the benefits are delayed, has a major impact on achieving an efficient allocation of resources in markets for the management of chronic diseases. This distortion is compounded by government health policy that tends to favour medical and pharmaceutical interventions further contributing to distortions in the allocation of resources and inefficiencies in the management of chronic disease. PMID:19534822

Self-benefiting in the allocation of scarce resources: leader-follower effects and the moderating effect of social value orientations.

PubMed

van Dijk, Eric; De Cremer, David

2006-10-01

Previous research on the allocation of scarce resources suggests that people who are assigned to higher positions (e.g., leaders) are more likely to make self-benefiting allocations than people who are assigned to lower positions (e.g., followers). In this article, the authors investigated the proposition that these findings would be moderated by people's social value orientations. In two experimental studies, the authors assigned participants either to the role of leader or follower and assessed the participants' social value orientations. In agreement with predictions, the findings show that position effects are moderated by social value orientation. Social value orientations only affected the allocation behavior of the leaders: Proself leaders allocated more resources to themselves than did prosocial leaders. Additional analyses indicate that these effects are mediated by feelings of entitlement.

Analysis of eighty-four commercial aviation incidents - Implications for a resource management approach to crew training

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Murphy, M. R.

1980-01-01

A resource management approach to aircrew performance is defined and utilized in structuring an analysis of 84 exemplary incidents from the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System. The distribution of enabling and associated (evolutionary) and recovery factors between and within five analytic categories suggests that resource management training be concentrated on: (1) interpersonal communications, with air traffic control information of major concern; (2) task management, mainly setting priorities and appropriately allocating tasks under varying workload levels; and (3) planning, coordination, and decisionmaking concerned with preventing and recovering from potentially unsafe situations in certain aircraft maneuvers.

[Strategic decisions in public psychiatric institutions: a proposed method for resource analysis and allocation].

PubMed

Micheletti, Pierre; Chierici, Piero; Durang, Xavier; Salvador, Nathalie; Lopez, Nathalie

2011-01-01

Because of its sector-based organization and extra-hospital care, public psychiatry has a unique position in healthcare. This paper describes the tools and procedures used to analyze and allocate the resources of the "Centre Hospitalier Alpes-Isère", a hospital serving a catchment population of 530,000 adults. A consensus-based approach was used to validate the selected indicators and included the participation of a geographer. Five levels of resource allocation were identified and classified using a decision tree. At each level, the relevant authorities and criteria were identified as key components of the decision-making process. This paper describes the first three levels of care provision. Focusing on adult care, a comparative assessment of the resources allocated to general psychiatric care and specialist care was conducted, in addition to a comparative assessment of the resources allocated to each of the hospital's four local centers. Geographical accessibility to extramural facilities was also assessed. A study of the characteristics of each general psychiatry clinic revealed significant disparities. The paper highlights several issues: the poor knowledge of psychiatric epidemiological data relating to the population within the catchment area, the difficulty of assessing non-consolidated data or indicators from multiple sources, and the limited and partial nature of geographical data for characterizing and evaluating health care in the hospital's peripheral clinics. Several studies are currently underway to assess the operational effectiveness of the tools and procedures used to analyze and allocate resources.

Cost of equity in homeland security resource allocation in the face of a strategic attacker.

PubMed

Shan, Xiaojun; Zhuang, Jun

2013-06-01

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in homeland security since September 11, 2001. Many mathematical models have been developed to study strategic interactions between governments (defenders) and terrorists (attackers). However, few studies have considered the tradeoff between equity and efficiency in homeland security resource allocation. In this article, we fill this gap by developing a novel model in which a government allocates defensive resources among multiple potential targets, while reserving a portion of defensive resources (represented by the equity coefficient) for equal distribution (according to geographical areas, population, density, etc.). Such a way to model equity is one of many alternatives, but was directly inspired by homeland security resource allocation practice. The government is faced with a strategic terrorist (adaptive adversary) whose attack probabilities are endogenously determined in the model. We study the effect of the equity coefficient on the optimal defensive resource allocations and the corresponding expected loss. We find that the cost of equity (in terms of increased expected loss) increases convexly in the equity coefficient. Furthermore, such cost is lower when: (a) government uses per-valuation equity; (b) the cost-effectiveness coefficient of defense increases; and (c) the total defense budget increases. Our model, results, and insights could be used to assist policy making. © 2012 Society for Risk Analysis.

Land Resources Allocation Strategies in an Urban Area Involving Uncertainty: A Case Study of Suzhou, in the Yangtze River Delta of China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, Shasha; Guan, Xingliang; Zhou, Min; Wang, Yang

2014-05-01

A large number of mathematical models have been developed to support land resource allocation decisions and land management needs; however, few of them can address various uncertainties that exist in relation to many factors presented in such decisions (e.g., land resource availabilities, land demands, land-use patterns, and social demands, as well as ecological requirements). In this study, a multi-objective interval-stochastic land resource allocation model (MOISLAM) was developed for tackling uncertainty that presents as discrete intervals and/or probability distributions. The developed model improves upon the existing multi-objective programming and inexact optimization approaches. The MOISLAM not only considers economic factors, but also involves food security and eco-environmental constraints; it can, therefore, effectively reflect various interrelations among different aspects in a land resource management system. Moreover, the model can also help examine the reliability of satisfying (or the risk of violating) system constraints under uncertainty. In this study, the MOISLAM was applied to a real case of long-term urban land resource allocation planning in Suzhou, in the Yangtze River Delta of China. Interval solutions associated with different risk levels of constraint violation were obtained. The results are considered useful for generating a range of decision alternatives under various system conditions, and thus helping decision makers to identify a desirable land resource allocation strategy under uncertainty.

Influence of mate preference and laying order on maternal allocation in a monogamous parrot species with extreme hatching asynchrony.

PubMed

Lahaye, Stefanie E P; Eens, Marcel; Iserbyt, Arne; Groothuis, Ton G G; de Vries, Bonnie; Müller, Wendt; Pinxten, Rianne

2015-05-01

It is well established that in many avian species, prenatal maternal resource allocation varies both between and within clutches and may affect offspring fitness. Differential allocation of maternal resources, in terms of egg weight and yolk composition, may therefore allow the female to adjust brood reduction and to fine-tune reproductive investment in accordance with the expected fitness returns. The adaptive value of such maternal resource allocation is thought to be context-dependent as well as species-specific. We investigated the effects of female preference for her mate on the allocation of prenatal maternal resources in the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus, a monogamous species of parrot that shows an extreme hatching asynchrony. We assessed mate preferences in a two-way preference test and allowed females two breeding rounds: one with the preferred and one with the non-preferred partner. We found no effect of preference on either latency to lay or clutch size, but females mated with the preferred partner laid eggs that contained significantly more yolk. Their eggs also contained significantly more androstenedione but not testosterone. Our results suggest that in this species, female preference may influence maternal resource allocation, and that the functional roles of each androgen in the yolk should be considered separately. In addition, we found a significant effect of laying order on egg and yolk weight as well as on yolk testosterone and androstenedione levels. These measures, however, did not change linearly with the laying order and render it unlikely that female budgerigars compensate for the extreme hatching asynchrony by adjusting within-clutch allocation of prenatal maternal resources. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Waste management: how reducing partiality can promote efficient resource allocation.

PubMed

Choshen-Hillel, Shoham; Shaw, Alex; Caruso, Eugene M

2015-08-01

Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay for equal work) and efficiency (not wasting resources). When these two principles conflict with one another, people will often waste resources to avoid inequity. We suggest that people wish to avoid inequity not because they find it inherently unfair, but because they want to avoid the appearance of partiality associated with it. We explore one way to reduce waste by reducing the perceived partiality of inequitable allocations. Specifically, we hypothesize that people will be more likely to favor an efficient (albeit inequitable) allocation if it puts them in a disadvantaged position than if it puts others in a disadvantaged position. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to choose between giving some extra resource to one person (thereby creating inequity between this person and equally deserving others) and not giving the resource to anyone (thereby wasting the resource). Six studies, using realistic scenarios and behavioral paradigms, provide robust evidence for a self-disadvantaging effect: Allocators were consistently more likely to create inequity to avoid wasting resources when the resulting inequity would put them at a relative disadvantage than when it would put others at a relative disadvantage. We further find that this self-disadvantaging effect is a direct result of people's concern about appearing partial. Our findings suggest the importance of impartiality even in distributive justice, thereby bridging a gap between the distributive and procedural justice literatures. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Allocation of Health Resources According To the Type and Size of Iranian Governmental Hospitals

PubMed Central

Hassani, SA; Abolhallaje, M; Inanlo, S; Hosseini, H; Pourmohammadi, K; Bastani, P; Ramezanian, M; Marnani, A Barati

2013-01-01

Background: Due to consuming about 50%–80% of health resources, hospitals are the greatest and costly operational units in Iranian Health system. so allocation of resources specially human and space resources as the most expensive ones is really important for further controlling of costs, analysis of costs and making suitable policies for increasing the profitability and allocation of resources and improvement of quality. Method: This paper intends to describe and analyze any allocation of resources in 530 university hospitals in Iran. The final goal of this research is to provide a data bank according which there is a basis for more scientific budget allocation of state’s hospitals from the size and type of application points of view. Results: The relevant index of person to bed was 2.04 for human resources. All hospitals more than 300 beds are located in benefiting areas from which 17 cases are educational and 2 cases are therapeutic. This is necessary to mention that the rate of management group forces to total personnel at deprived areas is about 2.5% more than benefiting areas. Conclusion: Because 60–80% of hospital costs are applied for human forces, all managers of hospitals are obliged to revise their policies in attraction and employment of human force in order to benefit from such a valuable resource and prevent from expensive costs. So any employment of personnel should be based upon real needs of hospital. PMID:23865036

Effect of physician perspective on allocation of Medicare resources for patients with advanced cancer.

PubMed

Rocke, Daniel J; Beumer, Halton W; Thomas, Steven; Lee, Walter T

2014-05-01

To assess how physician perspective (perspective of patient vs perspective of physician) affects Medicare resource allocation for patients with advanced cancer and compare physician allocations with actual cancer patient and caregiver allocations. Cross-sectional assessment. National assessment. Otolaryngologists. Physicians used a validated tool to create a Medicare plan for patients with advanced cancer. Participants took the perspective of an advanced cancer patient and made resource allocations between 15 benefit categories (assessment 2, November/December 2012). Results were compared with data from a prior assessment made from a physician's perspective (assessment 1, February/March 2012) and with data from a separate study with patients with cancer and caregivers. In total, 767 physicians completed assessment 1 and 237 completed assessment 2. Results were compared with 146 cancer patient and 114 caregiver assessments. Assessment 1 physician responses differed significantly from patients/caregivers in 14 categories (P < .05), while assessment 2 differed in 11. When comparing physician data, assessment 2 allocations differed significantly from assessment 1 in 7 categories. When these 7 categories were compared with patient/caregiver data, assessment 2 allocations in emotional care, drug coverage, and nursing facility categories were not significantly different. Assessment 1 allocations in cosmetic care, dental, home care, and primary care categories were more similar to patient/caregiver preferences, although all but home care were still significantly different. Otolaryngology-head and neck surgery physician perspectives on end-of-life care differ significantly from cancer patient/caregiver perspectives, even when physicians take a patient's perspective when allocating resources. This demonstrates the challenges inherent in end-of-life discussions.

A system dynamics model of a large R&D program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahn, Namsung

Organizations with large R&D activities must deal with a hierarchy of decision regarding resource allocation. At the highest level of allocation, the decision is related to the total allocation to R&D as some portion of revenue. The middle level of allocation deals with the allocation among phases of the R&D process. The lowest level of decisions relates to the resource allocation to specific projects within a specific phase. This study focuses on developing an R&D model to deal with the middle level of allocation, i.e., the allocation among phases of research such as basic research, development, and demonstration. The methodology used to develop the R&D model is System Dynamics. Our modeling concept is innovative in representing each phase of R&D as consisting of two parts: projects under way, and an inventory of successful but not-yet- exploited projects. In a simple world, this concept can yield an exact analytical solution for allocation of resources among phases. But in a real world, the concept should be improved by adding more complex structures with nonlinear behaviors. Two particular nonlinear feedbacks are incorporated into the R&D model. The probability of success for any specific project is assumed partly dependent upon resources allocated to the project. Further, the time required to reach a conclusion regarding the success or failure of a project is also assumed dependent upon the level of resources allocated. In addition, the number of successful projects partly depends on the inventory of potential ideas in the previous stage that can be exploited. This model can provide R&D management with insights into the effect of changing allocations to phases whether those changes are internally or externally driven. With this model, it is possible to study the effectiveness of management decisions in a continuous fashion. Managers can predict payoffs for a host of different policies. In addition, as new research results accumulate, a re- assessment of program goals can be implemented easily and allocations adjusted to enhance continuously the likelihood of success, and to optimize payoffs. Finally, this model can give managers a quantitative rationale for program evaluation and permit the quantitative assessment of various externally imposed changes. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)

Decision maker perceptions of resource allocation processes in Canadian health care organizations: a national survey.

PubMed

Smith, Neale; Mitton, Craig; Bryan, Stirling; Davidson, Alan; Urquhart, Bonnie; Gibson, Jennifer L; Peacock, Stuart; Donaldson, Cam

2013-07-02

Resource allocation is a key challenge for healthcare decision makers. While several case studies of organizational practice exist, there have been few large-scale cross-organization comparisons. Between January and April 2011, we conducted an on-line survey of senior decision makers within regional health authorities (and closely equivalent organizations) across all Canadian provinces and territories. We received returns from 92 individual managers, from 60 out of 89 organizations in total. The survey inquired about structures, process features, and behaviours related to organization-wide resource allocation decisions. We focus here on three main aspects: type of process, perceived fairness, and overall rating. About one-half of respondents indicated that their organization used a formal process for resource allocation, while the others reported that political or historical factors were predominant. Seventy percent (70%) of respondents self-reported that their resource allocation process was fair and just over one-half assessed their process as 'good' or 'very good'. This paper explores these findings in greater detail and assesses them in context of the larger literature. Data from this large-scale cross-jurisdictional survey helps to illustrate common challenges and areas of positive performance among Canada's health system leadership teams.

Divergence in plant and microbial allocation strategies explains continental patterns in microbial allocation and biogeochemical fluxes.

PubMed

Averill, Colin

2014-10-01

Allocation trade-offs shape ecological and biogeochemical phenomena at local to global scale. Plant allocation strategies drive major changes in ecosystem carbon cycling. Microbial allocation to enzymes that decompose carbon vs. organic nutrients may similarly affect ecosystem carbon cycling. Current solutions to this allocation problem prioritise stoichiometric tradeoffs implemented in plant ecology. These solutions may not maximise microbial growth and fitness under all conditions, because organic nutrients are also a significant carbon resource for microbes. I created multiple allocation frameworks and simulated microbial growth using a microbial explicit biogeochemical model. I demonstrate that prioritising stoichiometric trade-offs does not optimise microbial allocation, while exploiting organic nutrients as carbon resources does. Analysis of continental-scale enzyme data supports the allocation patterns predicted by this framework, and modelling suggests large deviations in soil C loss based on which strategy is implemented. Therefore, understanding microbial allocation strategies will likely improve our understanding of carbon cycling and climate. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/CNRS.

Outsourcing. Health care organizations are considering strategic goals in making outsourcing decisions.

PubMed

Chin, T L

1997-08-01

More health care organizations are outsourcing the management of some or all of their information systems. Executives at many organizations that have tried outsourcing say it enables them to focus on core competencies, better allocate resources, get more information technology at less cost, share risks of implementing information technology with outsourcers and guarantee access to skilled labor. But the information technology outsourcing market remains relatively small in health care because many CIOs still are wary of turning over control of important functions to outsiders.

Exploring Data-Driven Decision-Making in the Field: How Faculty Use Data and Other Forms of Information to Guide Instructional Decision-Making. WCER Working Paper No. 2014-3

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hora, Matthew T.; Bouwma-Gearhart, Jana; Park, Hyoung Joon

2014-01-01

A defining characteristic of current U.S. educational policy is the use of data to inform decisions about resource allocation, teacher hiring, and curriculum and instruction. Perhaps the biggest challenge to data-driven decision making (DDDM) is that data use alone does not automatically result in improved teaching and learning. Research indicates…

Optimal Resource Allocation in Library Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rouse, William B.

1975-01-01

Queueing theory is used to model processes as either waiting or balking processes. The optimal allocation of resources to these processes is defined as that which maximizes the expected value of the decision-maker's utility function. (Author)

Resource allocation in shared spectrum access communications for operators with diverse service requirements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kibria, Mirza Golam; Villardi, Gabriel Porto; Ishizu, Kentaro; Kojima, Fumihide; Yano, Hiroyuki

2016-12-01

In this paper, we study inter-operator spectrum sharing and intra-operator resource allocation in shared spectrum access communication systems and propose efficient dynamic solutions to address both inter-operator and intra-operator resource allocation optimization problems. For inter-operator spectrum sharing, we present two competent approaches, namely the subcarrier gain-based sharing and fragmentation-based sharing, which carry out fair and flexible allocation of the available shareable spectrum among the operators subject to certain well-defined sharing rules, traffic demands, and channel propagation characteristics. The subcarrier gain-based spectrum sharing scheme has been found to be more efficient in terms of achieved throughput. However, the fragmentation-based sharing is more attractive in terms of computational complexity. For intra-operator resource allocation, we consider resource allocation problem with users' dissimilar service requirements, where the operator supports users with delay constraint and non-delay constraint service requirements, simultaneously. This optimization problem is a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem and non-convex, which is computationally very expensive, and the complexity grows exponentially with the number of integer variables. We propose less-complex and efficient suboptimal solution based on formulating exact linearization, linear approximation, and convexification techniques for the non-linear and/or non-convex objective functions and constraints. Extensive simulation performance analysis has been carried out that validates the efficiency of the proposed solution.

Introducing New Priority Setting and Resource Allocation Processes in a Canadian Healthcare Organization: A Case Study Analysis Informed by Multiple Streams Theory

PubMed Central

Smith, Neale; Mitton, Craig; Dowling, Laura; Hiltz, Mary-Ann; Campbell, Matthew; Gujar, Shashi Ashok

2016-01-01

Background: In this article, we analyze one case instance of how proposals for change to the priority setting and resource allocation (PSRA) processes at a Canadian healthcare institution reached the decision agenda of the organization’s senior leadership. We adopt key concepts from an established policy studies framework – Kingdon’s multiple streams theory – to inform our analysis. Methods: Twenty-six individual interviews were conducted at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, NS, Canada. Participants were asked to reflect upon the reasons leading up to the implementation of a formal priority setting process – Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA) – in the 2012/2013 fiscal year. Responses were analyzed qualitatively using Kingdon’s model as a template. Results: The introduction of PBMA can be understood as the opening of a policy window. A problem stream – defined as lack of broad engagement and information sharing across service lines in past practice – converged with a known policy solution, PBMA, which addressed the identified problems and was perceived as easy to use and with an evidence-base from past applications across Canada and elsewhere. Conditions in the political realm allowed for this intervention to proceed, but also constrained its potential outcomes. Conclusion: Understanding in a theoretically-informed way how change occurs in healthcare management practices can provide useful lessons to researchers and decision-makers whose aim is to help health systems achieve the most effective use of available financial resources PMID:26673646

Improving district facility readiness: a 12-month evaluation of a data-driven health systems strengthening intervention in rural Rwanda.

PubMed

Iyer, Hari S; Kamanzi, Emmanuel; Mugunga, Jean Claude; Finnegan, Karen; Uwingabiye, Alice; Shyaka, Edward; Niyonzima, Saleh; Hirschhorn, Lisa R; Drobac, Peter C

2015-01-01

While health systems strengthening (HSS) interventions are recommended by global health policy experts to improve population health in resource-limited settings, few examples exist of evaluations of HSS interventions conducted at the district level. In 2009, a partnership between Partners In Health (PIH), a non-governmental organization, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health (RMOH) was provided funds to implement and evaluate a district-level HSS intervention in two rural districts of Rwanda. The partnership provided limited funds to 14 health centers for targeted systems support in 2010; six others received support prior to the intervention (reference). RMOH health systems norms were mapped across the WHO HSS framework, scored from 0 to 10 and incorporated into a rapid survey assessing 11 domains of facility readiness. Stakeholder meetings allowed partnership leaders to review results, set priorities, and allocate resources. Investments included salary support, infrastructure improvements, medical equipment, and social support for patients. We compared facility domain scores from the start of the intervention to 12 months and tested for correlation between change in score and change in funding allocation to assess equity in our approach. We found significant improvements among intervention facilities from baseline to 12 months across several domains [infrastructure (+4, p=0.0001), clinical services (+1.2, p=0.03), infection and sanitation control (+0.6, p=0.03), medical equipment (+1.0, p=0.02), information use (+2, p=0.002)]. Composite score across domains improved from 6.2 at baseline to 7.4 at 12 months (p=0.002). Across facilities, 50% had composite scores greater than the average score among reference facilities (7.4) at 12 months compared to none at baseline. Rapid facility surveys, stakeholder engagement, and information feedback can be used for gap analysis and resource allocation. This approach can achieve effective use of limited resources, improve facility readiness, and ensure consistency of facility capacity to provide quality care at the district level.

Improving district facility readiness: a 12-month evaluation of a data-driven health systems strengthening intervention in rural Rwanda

PubMed Central

Iyer, Hari S.; Kamanzi, Emmanuel; Mugunga, Jean Claude; Finnegan, Karen; Uwingabiye, Alice; Shyaka, Edward; Niyonzima, Saleh; Hirschhorn, Lisa R.; Drobac, Peter C.

2015-01-01

Background While health systems strengthening (HSS) interventions are recommended by global health policy experts to improve population health in resource-limited settings, few examples exist of evaluations of HSS interventions conducted at the district level. In 2009, a partnership between Partners In Health (PIH), a non-governmental organization, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health (RMOH) was provided funds to implement and evaluate a district-level HSS intervention in two rural districts of Rwanda. Design The partnership provided limited funds to 14 health centers for targeted systems support in 2010; six others received support prior to the intervention (reference). RMOH health systems norms were mapped across the WHO HSS framework, scored from 0 to 10 and incorporated into a rapid survey assessing 11 domains of facility readiness. Stakeholder meetings allowed partnership leaders to review results, set priorities, and allocate resources. Investments included salary support, infrastructure improvements, medical equipment, and social support for patients. We compared facility domain scores from the start of the intervention to 12 months and tested for correlation between change in score and change in funding allocation to assess equity in our approach. Results We found significant improvements among intervention facilities from baseline to 12 months across several domains [infrastructure (+4, p=0.0001), clinical services (+1.2, p=0.03), infection and sanitation control (+0.6, p=0.03), medical equipment (+1.0, p=0.02), information use (+2, p=0.002)]. Composite score across domains improved from 6.2 at baseline to 7.4 at 12 months (p=0.002). Across facilities, 50% had composite scores greater than the average score among reference facilities (7.4) at 12 months compared to none at baseline. Conclusions Rapid facility surveys, stakeholder engagement, and information feedback can be used for gap analysis and resource allocation. This approach can achieve effective use of limited resources, improve facility readiness, and ensure consistency of facility capacity to provide quality care at the district level. PMID:26140729

Service guidelines based on Resource Utilization Groups Version III for Home Care provide decision-making support for case managers.

PubMed

Collister, Barbara; Stein, Glenda; Katz, Deborah; DeBruyn, Joan; Andrusiw, Linda; Cloutier, Sheila

2012-01-01

Increasing costs and budget reductions combined with increasing demand from our growing, aging population support the need to ensure that the scarce resources allocated to home care clients match client needs. This article details how Integrated Home Care for the Calgary Zone of Alberta Health Services considered ethical and economic principles and used data from the Resident Assessment Instrument for Home Care (RAI-HC) and case mix indices from the Resource Utilization Groups Version III for Home Care (RUG-III/HC) to formulate service guidelines. These explicit service guidelines formalize and support individual resource allocation decisions made by case managers and provide a consistent and transparent method of allocating limited resources.

Ising game: Nonequilibrium steady states of resource-allocation systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xin, C.; Yang, G.; Huang, J. P.

2017-04-01

Resource-allocation systems are ubiquitous in the human society. But how external fields affect the state of such systems remains poorly explored due to the lack of a suitable model. Because the behavior of spins pursuing energy minimization required by physical laws is similar to that of humans chasing payoff maximization studied in game theory, here we combine the Ising model with the market-directed resource-allocation game, yielding an Ising game. Based on the Ising game, we show theoretical, simulative and experimental evidences for a formula, which offers a clear expression of nonequilibrium steady states (NESSs). Interestingly, the formula also reveals a convertible relationship between the external field (exogenous factor) and resource ratio (endogenous factor), and a class of saturation as the external field exceeds certain limits. This work suggests that the Ising game could be a suitable model for studying external-field effects on resource-allocation systems, and it could provide guidance both for seeking more relations between NESSs and equilibrium states and for regulating human systems by choosing NESSs appropriately.

The Mass Flux of Non-renewable Energy for Humanity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Solomon, Edwin

The global energy supply relies on non-renewable energy sources, coal, crude oil, and natural gas, along with nuclear power from uranium and these finite resources are located within the upper few kilometers of the Earth's crust. The total quantity of non-renewable energy resources consumed relative to the total quantity available is an essential question facing humanity. Analyses of energy consumption was conducted for the period 1800--2014 using data from the U. S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and World Energy Production, 1800--1985 to determine the balance between non-renewable energy resources consumed and ultimately recoverable reserves. Annual energy consumption was plotted for each non-renewable resource followed by analyses to determine annual growth rates of consumption. Results indicated total energy consumption grew approximately exponentially 3.6% per year from 1800--1975 and was linear from 1975--2014. The ultimately recoverable reserves (URR) plus the total quantity consumed to date equals the total energy resource reserve prior to exploitation (7.15 x 1018 grams). Knowing the original resource quantity and the annual consumption and growth rates, we can forecast the duration of remaining resources using different scenarios. Alternatively, we can use population growth models and consumption trends to determine the per capita allocation trends and model that into the future. Alternative modeling of future resource allocation on a per capita bases suggests that resource lifetime may be significantly less than that predicted from consumption and production dynamics alone.

Resource allocation using ANN in LTE

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yigit, Tuncay; Ersoy, Mevlut

2017-07-01

LTE is the 4th generation wireless network technology, which provides flexible bandwidth, higher data speeds and lower delay. Difficulties may be experienced upon an increase in the number of users in LTE. The objective of this study is to ensure a faster solution to any such resource allocation problems which might arise upon an increase in the number of users. A fast and effective solution has been obtained by making use of Artificial Neural Network. As a result, fast working artificial intelligence methods may be used in resource allocation problems during operation.

Dynamic fair node spectrum allocation for ad hoc networks using random matrices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahmes, Mark; Lemieux, George; Chester, Dave; Sonnenberg, Jerry

2015-05-01

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is widely seen as a solution to the problem of limited spectrum, because of its ability to adapt the operating frequency of a radio. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) can extend high-capacity mobile communications over large areas where fixed and tethered-mobile systems are not available. In one use case with high potential impact, cognitive radio employs spectrum sensing to facilitate the identification of allocated frequencies not currently accessed by their primary users. Primary users own the rights to radiate at a specific frequency and geographic location, while secondary users opportunistically attempt to radiate at a specific frequency when the primary user is not using it. We populate a spatial radio environment map (REM) database with known information that can be leveraged in an ad hoc network to facilitate fair path use of the DSA-discovered links. Utilization of high-resolution geospatial data layers in RF propagation analysis is directly applicable. Random matrix theory (RMT) is useful in simulating network layer usage in nodes by a Wishart adjacency matrix. We use the Dijkstra algorithm for discovering ad hoc network node connection patterns. We present a method for analysts to dynamically allocate node-node path and link resources using fair division. User allocation of limited resources as a function of time must be dynamic and based on system fairness policies. The context of fair means that first available request for an asset is not envied as long as it is not yet allocated or tasked in order to prevent cycling of the system. This solution may also save money by offering a Pareto efficient repeatable process. We use a water fill queue algorithm to include Shapley value marginal contributions for allocation.

The Role of Research and Analysis in Resource Allocation Decisions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lea, Dennis; Polster, Patty Poppe

2011-01-01

In a time of diminishing resources and increased accountability, it is important for school leaders to make the most of every dollar they spend. One approach to ensuring responsible resource allocation is to closely examine the organizational culture surrounding decision making and provide a structure and process to incorporate research and data…

Resource Allocation Strategies in Doctoral/Research University (Extensive) Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blake Gonzalez, Barbara

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to identify and understand the management of resources by library directors at 151 Public and Private Carnegie classified extensive university libraries in an environment of limited funding for higher education. This study examined the following research questions: 1. What resource allocation strategies are used by…

Resource Allocation and Improved Student Performance: Teachers' Perspectives on School Finance Administration.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rudo, Zena H.

As expectations rise for students to perform at higher levels, the question of how best to support student performance through resources becomes paramount. In determining new ways to better allocate resources, administrators must consider teacher input on what has/has not been effective in supporting increased student performance. Teachers…

Sharing the cost of river basin adaptation portfolios to climate change: Insights from social justice and cooperative game theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Girard, Corentin; Rinaudo, Jean-Daniel; Pulido-Velazquez, Manuel

2016-10-01

The adaptation of water resource systems to the potential impacts of climate change requires mixed portfolios of supply and demand adaptation measures. The issue is not only to select efficient, robust, and flexible adaptation portfolios but also to find equitable strategies of cost allocation among the stakeholders. Our work addresses such cost allocation problems by applying two different theoretical approaches: social justice and cooperative game theory in a real case study. First of all, a cost-effective portfolio of adaptation measures at the basin scale is selected using a least-cost optimization model. Cost allocation solutions are then defined based on economic rationality concepts from cooperative game theory (the Core). Second, interviews are conducted to characterize stakeholders' perceptions of social justice principles associated with the definition of alternatives cost allocation rules. The comparison of the cost allocation scenarios leads to contrasted insights in order to inform the decision-making process at the river basin scale and potentially reap the efficiency gains from cooperation in the design of river basin adaptation portfolios.

The development of attention skills in action video game players

PubMed Central

Dye, M.W.G.; Green, C.S.; Bavelier, D.

2009-01-01

Previous research suggests that action video game play improves attentional resources, allowing gamers to better allocate their attention across both space and time. In order to further characterize the plastic changes resulting from playing these video games, we administered the Attentional Network Test (ANT) to action game players and non-playing controls aged between 7 and 22 years. By employing a mixture of cues and flankers, the ANT provides measures of how well attention is allocated to targets as a function of alerting and orienting cues, and to what extent observers are able to filter out the influence of task irrelevant information flanking those targets. The data suggest that action video game players of all ages have enhanced attentional skills that allow them to make faster correct responses to targets, and leaves additional processing resources that spill over to process distractors flanking the targets. PMID:19428410

Clinic Workflow Simulations using Secondary EHR Data

PubMed Central

Hribar, Michelle R.; Biermann, David; Read-Brown, Sarah; Reznick, Leah; Lombardi, Lorinna; Parikh, Mansi; Chamberlain, Winston; Yackel, Thomas R.; Chiang, Michael F.

2016-01-01

Clinicians today face increased patient loads, decreased reimbursements and potential negative productivity impacts of using electronic health records (EHR), but have little guidance on how to improve clinic efficiency. Discrete event simulation models are powerful tools for evaluating clinical workflow and improving efficiency, particularly when they are built from secondary EHR timing data. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these simulation models can be used for resource allocation decision making as well as for evaluating novel scheduling strategies in outpatient ophthalmology clinics. Key findings from this study are that: 1) secondary use of EHR timestamp data in simulation models represents clinic workflow, 2) simulations provide insight into the best allocation of resources in a clinic, 3) simulations provide critical information for schedule creation and decision making by clinic managers, and 4) simulation models built from EHR data are potentially generalizable. PMID:28269861

Cognitive radio based optimal channel sensing and resources allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vijayasarveswari, V.; Khatun, S.; Fakir, M. M.; Nayeem, M. N.; Kamarudin, L. M.; Jakaria, A.

2017-03-01

Cognitive radio (CR) is the latest type of wireless technoloy that is proposed to mitigate spectrum saturation problem. İn cognitve radio, secondary user will use primary user's spectrum during primary user's absence without interupting primary user's transmission. This paper focuses on practical cognitive radio network development process using Android based smart phone for the data transmission. Energy detector based sensing method was proposed and used here because it doesnot require primary user's information. Bluetooth and Wi-fi are the two available types of spectrum that was sensed for CR detection. Simulation showed cognitive radio network can be developed using Android based smart phones. So, a complete application was developed using Java based Android Eclipse program. Finally, the application was uploaded and run on Android based smart phone to form and verify CR network for channel sensing and resource allocation. The observed efficiency of the application was around 81%.

Staff nurse turnover costs: Part II, Measurements and results.

PubMed

Jones, C B

1990-05-01

This study demonstrated that the costs of nursing turnover can be high (over +10,000 per RN turnover), and that the potential for adverse impact on the nursing department, the hospital environment, and the healthcare environment exists. The results of this study are important, particularly in the midst of a national nursing shortage, for several reasons. CNEs are responsible for obtaining, allocating, and managing nursing department resources; knowledge of nursing turnover costs will allow them to make more informed decisions about how best to allocate scarce resources. The findings of this study are also important to hospital administrators because they demonstrate the financial impact of high rates of nursing turnover on healthcare delivery. Finally, these findings provide nurse researchers direction for future research into the costs and benefits of nursing turnover and retention activities, so that cost-effective methods of minimizing organizational costs can be determined.

Examining health care spending trends over a decade: the Palestinian case.

PubMed

Hamidi, S; Narcı, H Ö; Akinci, F; Nacakgedigi, O

2016-03-15

An analysis was made of recent health care spending patterns in the occupied Palestinian territory, in order to inform future health policy-making and planning. Data were obtained from the national health accounts for the period 2000-2011. The current level of resource allocation to the health care sector is higher than in many developed countries and is not sustainable. The private sector represents the largest source of health financing (61%) and the burden falls disproportionally on individual households, who account for 63% of private health care expenditure. Key recommendations include: building capacity in the government sector to reduce the outsourcing of health services; modifying inequitable financing mechanisms to reduce the burden on households; and allocating more resources for health promotion and disease prevention programmes. Reorientation of the health system is also needed in terms of reducing the share of spending on inpatient services in favour of more day surgery, outpatient and home-based services.

Cross-cultural differences in distributive justice: a comparison of Turkey and the U.S.

PubMed

Murphy-Berman, Virginia A; Berman, John J; Cukur, Cem Safak

2012-01-01

When allocators make decisions about distributing resources, they face a dilemma if the expectations for consequences that will flow from particular choices are incongruent with each other. For example, a certain allocation choice might be expected to make an allocator appear warm and likable but unfair. Previous research has found that culture can shape these perceptions and, thus, their congruence or incongruence. The present study further investigated these ideas. Differences between Turkish and U.S. students' perceptions of allocators who distributed resources on the basis of merit vs. need were investigated. Results revealed an allocation dilemma among the U.S. but not among the Turkish students. Specifically, the U.S. students perceived greater incongruence among allocation consequences for both merit and need choices than did the students from Turkey for whom perceptions of allocator's fairness were more aligned with perceptions of allocator's warmth.

Health Resources Priority and Allocations System (HRPAS). Interim final rule.

PubMed

2015-07-17

This interim final rule establishes standards and procedures by which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may require that certain contracts or orders that promote the national defense be given priority over other contracts or orders. This rule also sets new standards and procedures by which HHS may allocate materials, services, and facilities to promote the national defense. This rule will implement HHS's administration of priorities and allocations actions, and establish the Health Resources Priorities and Allocation System (HRPAS). The HRPAS will cover health resources pursuant to the authority under Section 101(c) of the Defense Production Act as delegated to HHS by Executive Order 13603. Priorities authorities (and other authorities delegated to the Secretary in E.O. 13603, but not covered by this regulation) may be re-delegated by the Secretary. The Secretary retains the authority for allocations.

Are Indirect Benefits Relevant to Health Care Allocation Decisions?

PubMed Central

Du Toit, Jessica; Millum, Joseph

2016-01-01

Abstract When allocating scarce healthcare resources, the expected benefits of alternative allocations matter. But, there are different kinds of benefits. Some are direct benefits to the recipient of the resource such as the health improvements of receiving treatment. Others are indirect benefits to third parties such as the economic gains from having a healthier workforce. This article considers whether only the direct benefits of alternative healthcare resource allocations are relevant to allocation decisions, or whether indirect benefits are relevant too. First, we distinguish different conceptions of direct and indirect benefits and argue that only a recipient conception could be morally relevant. We analyze four arguments for thinking that indirect benefits should not count and argue that none is successful in showing that the indirectness of a benefit is a good reason not to count it. We conclude that direct and indirect benefits should be evaluated in the same way. PMID:27465773

SLA-based optimisation of virtualised resource for multi-tier web applications in cloud data centres

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bi, Jing; Yuan, Haitao; Tie, Ming; Tan, Wei

2015-10-01

Dynamic virtualised resource allocation is the key to quality of service assurance for multi-tier web application services in cloud data centre. In this paper, we develop a self-management architecture of cloud data centres with virtualisation mechanism for multi-tier web application services. Based on this architecture, we establish a flexible hybrid queueing model to determine the amount of virtual machines for each tier of virtualised application service environments. Besides, we propose a non-linear constrained optimisation problem with restrictions defined in service level agreement. Furthermore, we develop a heuristic mixed optimisation algorithm to maximise the profit of cloud infrastructure providers, and to meet performance requirements from different clients as well. Finally, we compare the effectiveness of our dynamic allocation strategy with two other allocation strategies. The simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation method is efficient in improving the overall performance and reducing the resource energy cost.

Allocation of Resources to Communication of Research Result Summaries.

PubMed

Richards, Julie E; Bane, Emmi; Fullerton, Stephanie M; Ludman, Evette J; Jarvik, Gail

2016-10-01

Researchers and policymakers recommend communicating summary research results to biobank participants when feasible. To date, however, there have been few explorations of participant preferences for dedicating resources to this activity. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants of a genetic medicine biobank. Participants were interviewed by phone about their motivation for participation, and opinions about the allocation of resources to communicating summary results. De-identified transcripts were used for a directed content analysis. Most biobank participation was altruistic. All participants were not only interested in receiving summary results but also expressed a clear preference for allocating limited funds to conducting additional genetic research. The results suggest that participants have a nuanced view about the allocation of biobank resources to returning summary results, and asking their opinion is a valuable exercise. Researchers may benefit from transparency about research goals and involving biobank participants in decisions about return of summary results.

Curvilinear relationships between resource allocation and life domain-specific interference.

PubMed

Waldrop, Jessica S; Erb, Kaitlyn R; Grawitch, Matthew J

2017-10-01

This study investigated the inherent complexities of the work-life interface (WLI) by examining the relationship between resource allocation (i.e., time and energy dedicated to a particular domain) and perceived interference of individual life domains. Much of the research on the WLI is based on the assumption that a linear pattern best describes the relationship between resource allocation and the interference caused by various life domains; however, this study examined the possibility that curvilinear relationships may be a more appropriate representation. Results indicated that resource allocation is a meaningful predictor of interference, and for many life domains a curvilinear relationship accounts for more variance than a linear one; a breakdown of the sample also revealed this relationship varies by gender. Overall, findings suggest that the nature of the WLI is more individualized and complex than is currently conceptualized in the field. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Proposing integrated Shannon's entropy-inverse data envelopment analysis methods for resource allocation problem under a fuzzy environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Çakır, Süleyman

2017-10-01

In this study, a two-phase methodology for resource allocation problems under a fuzzy environment is proposed. In the first phase, the imprecise Shannon's entropy method and the acceptability index are suggested, for the first time in the literature, to select input and output variables to be used in the data envelopment analysis (DEA) application. In the second step, an interval inverse DEA model is executed for resource allocation in a short run. In an effort to exemplify the practicality of the proposed fuzzy model, a real case application has been conducted involving 16 cement firms listed in Borsa Istanbul. The results of the case application indicated that the proposed hybrid model is a viable procedure to handle input-output selection and resource allocation problems under fuzzy conditions. The presented methodology can also lend itself to different applications such as multi-criteria decision-making problems.

The social power of regret: the effect of social appraisal and anticipated emotions on fair and unfair allocations in resource dilemmas.

PubMed

van der Schalk, Job; Kuppens, Toon; Bruder, Martin; Manstead, Antony S R

2015-02-01

We investigated how another person's emotions about resource allocation decisions influence observers' resource allocations by influencing the emotions that observers anticipate feeling if they were to act in the same way. Participants were exposed to an exemplar who made a fair or unfair division in an economic game and expressed pride or regret about this decision. Participants then made their own resource allocation decisions. Exemplar regret about acting fairly decreased the incidence of fair behavior (Studies 1A and 1B). Likewise, exemplar regret about acting unfairly increased the incidence of fair behavior (Study 2). The effect of others' emotions on observers' behavior was mediated by the observers' anticipated emotions. We discuss our findings in light of the view that social appraisal and anticipated emotions are important tools for social learning and may contribute to the formation and maintenance of social norms about greed and fairness.

Space Network Control Conference on Resource Allocation Concepts and Approaches

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Moe, Karen L. (Editor)

1991-01-01

The results are presented of the Space Network Control (SNC) Conference. In the late 1990s, when the Advanced Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System is operational, Space Network communication services will be supported and controlled by the SNC. The goals of the conference were to survey existing resource allocation concepts and approaches, to identify solutions applicable to the Space Network, and to identify avenues of study in support of the SNC development. The conference was divided into three sessions: (1) Concepts for Space Network Allocation; (2) SNC and User Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) Human-Computer Interface Concepts; and (3) Resource Allocation Tools, Technology, and Algorithms. Key recommendations addressed approaches to achieving higher levels of automation in the scheduling process.

Resource allocation and funding challenges for regional local health departments in Nebraska.

PubMed

Chen, Li-Wu; Jacobson, Janelle; Roberts, Sara; Palm, David

2012-01-01

This study examined the mechanism of resource allocation among member counties and the funding challenges of regional health departments (RHDs) in Nebraska. DESIGN AND STUDY SETTING: In 2009, we conducted a qualitative case study of 2 Nebraska RHDs to gain insight into their experiences of making resource allocation decisions and confronting funding challenges. The 2 RHD sites were selected for this case study on the basis of their heterogeneity in terms of population distribution in member counties. Sixteen semistructured in-person interviews were conducted with RHD directors, staff, and board of health members. Interview data were coded and analyzed using NVivo qualitative analysis software (QSR International [Americas] Inc., Cambridge, MA). Our findings suggested that the directors of RHDs play an integral role in making resource allocation decisions on the basis of community needs, not on a formula or on individual county population size. Interviewees also reported that the size of the vulnerable population served by the RHD had a significant impact on the level of resources for RHD's programs. The RHD's decisions about resource allocation were also dependent on the amount and type of resources received from the state. Interviewees identified inadequacy and instability of funding as the 2 main funding challenges for their RHD. These challenges negatively impacted workforce capacity and the long-term sustainability of some programs. Regional health departments may not benefit from better leveraging resources and building a stronger structural capacity unless the issues of funding inadequacy and instability are addressed. Strategies that can be used by RHDs to address these funding challenges include seeking grants to support programs, leveraging existing resources, and building community partnerships to share resources. Future research is needed to identify RHDs' optimal workforce capacity, required funding level, and potential funding mechanisms.

Supportive and palliative care for metastatic breast cancer: resource allocations in low- and middle-income countries. A Breast Health Global Initiative 2013 consensus statement.

PubMed

Cleary, James; Ddungu, Henry; Distelhorst, Sandra R; Ripamonti, Carla; Rodin, Gary M; Bushnaq, Mohammad A; Clegg-Lamptey, Joe N; Connor, Stephen R; Diwani, Msemo B; Eniu, Alexandru; Harford, Joe B; Kumar, Suresh; Rajagopal, M R; Thompson, Beti; Gralow, Julie R; Anderson, Benjamin O

2013-10-01

Many women diagnosed with breast cancer in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) present with advanced-stage disease. While cure is not a realistic outcome, site-specific interventions, supportive care, and palliative care can achieve meaningful outcomes and improve quality of life. As part of the 5th Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI) Global Summit, an expert international panel identified thirteen key resource recommendations for supportive and palliative care for metastatic breast cancer. The recommendations are presented in three resource-stratified tables: health system resource allocations, resource allocations for organ-based metastatic breast cancer, and resource allocations for palliative care. These tables illustrate how health systems can provide supportive and palliative care services for patients at a basic level of available resources, and incrementally add services as more resources become available. The health systems table includes health professional education, patient and family education, palliative care models, and diagnostic testing. The metastatic disease management table provides recommendations for supportive care for bone, brain, liver, lung, and skin metastases as well as bowel obstruction. The third table includes the palliative care recommendations: pain management, and psychosocial and spiritual aspects of care. The panel considered pain management a priority at a basic level of resource allocation and emphasized the need for morphine to be easily available in LMICs. Regular pain assessments and the proper use of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions are recommended. Basic-level resources for psychosocial and spiritual aspects of care include health professional and patient and family education, as well as patient support, including community-based peer support. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Introduction to health economics and decision-making: Is economics relevant for the frontline clinician?

PubMed

Goeree, Ron; Diaby, Vakaramoko

2013-12-01

In a climate of escalating demands for new health care services and significant constraints on new resources, the disciplines of health economics and health technology assessment (HTA) have increasingly been turned to as explicit evidence-based frameworks to help make tough health care access and reimbursement decisions. Health economics is the discipline of economics concerned with the efficient allocation of health care resources, essentially trying to maximize health benefits to society contingent upon available resources. HTA is a broader field drawing upon several disciplines, but which relies heavily upon the tools of health economics and economic evaluation. Traditionally, health economics and economic evaluation have been widely used at the political (macro) and local (meso) decision-making levels, and have progressively had an important role even at informing individual clinical decisions (micro level). The aim of this paper is to introduce readers to health economics and discuss its relevance to frontline clinicians. Particularly, the content of the paper will facilitate clinicians' understanding of the link between economics and their medical practice, and how clinical decision-making reflects on health care resource allocation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Achieving an optimal allocation of resources for animal health surveillance, intervention and disease mitigation.

PubMed

Hasler, B; Delabouglise, A; Babo Martins, S

2017-04-01

The primary role of animal health economics is to inform decision-making by determining optimal investments for animal health. Animal health surveillance produces information to guide interventions. Consequently, investments in surveillance and intervention must be evaluated together. This article explores the different theoretical frameworks and methods developed to assess and optimise the spending of resources in surveillance and intervention and their technical interdependence. The authors present frameworks that define the relationship between health investment and losses due to disease, and the relationship between surveillance and intervention resources. Surveillance and intervention are usually considered as technical substitutes, since increased investments in surveillance reduce the level of intervention resources required to reach the same benefit. The authors also discuss approaches used to quantify externalities and non-monetary impacts. Finally, they describe common economic evaluation types, including optimisation, acceptability and least-cost studies.

Technical efficiency and resources allocation in university hospitals in Tehran, 2009-2012.

PubMed

Rezapour, Aziz; Ebadifard Azar, Farbod; Yousef Zadeh, Negar; Roumiani, YarAllah; Bagheri Faradonbeh, Saeed

2015-01-01

Assessment of hospitals' performance in achieving its goals is a basic necessity. Measuring the efficiency of hospitals in order to boost resource productivity in healthcare organizations is extremely important. The aim of this study was to measure technical efficiency and determining status of resource allocation in some university hospitals, in Tehran, Iran. This study was conducted in 2012; the research population consisted of all hospitals affiliated to Iran and Tehran medical sciences universities of. Required data, such as human and capital resources information and also production variables (hospital outputs) were collected from data centers of studied hospitals. Data were analyzed using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, Deap2,1 software; and the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method, Frontier 4,1 software. According to DEA method, average of technical, management (pure) and scale efficiency of the studied hospitals during the study period were calculated 0.87, 0.971, and 0.907, respectively. All kinds of efficiency did not follow a fixed trend over the study time and were constantly changing. In the stochastic frontier's production function analysis, the technical efficiency of the studied industry during the study period was estimated to be 0.389. This study represented hospitals with the highest and lowest efficiency. Reference hospitals (more efficient states) were indicated for the inefficient centers. According to the findings, it was found that in the hospitals that do not operate efficiently, there is a capacity to improve the technical efficiency by removing excess inputs without changes in the level of outputs. However, by the optimal allocation of resources in most studied hospitals, very important economy of scale can be achieved.

Technical efficiency and resources allocation in university hospitals in Tehran, 2009-2012

PubMed Central

Rezapour, Aziz; Ebadifard Azar, Farbod; Yousef Zadeh, Negar; Roumiani, YarAllah; Bagheri Faradonbeh, Saeed

2015-01-01

Background: Assessment of hospitals’ performance in achieving its goals is a basic necessity. Measuring the efficiency of hospitals in order to boost resource productivity in healthcare organizations is extremely important. The aim of this study was to measure technical efficiency and determining status of resource allocation in some university hospitals, in Tehran, Iran. Methods: This study was conducted in 2012; the research population consisted of all hospitals affiliated to Iran and Tehran medical sciences universities of. Required data, such as human and capital resources information and also production variables (hospital outputs) were collected from data centers of studied hospitals. Data were analyzed using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, Deap2,1 software; and the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method, Frontier 4,1 software. Results: According to DEA method, average of technical, management (pure) and scale efficiency of the studied hospitals during the study period were calculated 0.87, 0.971, and 0.907, respectively. All kinds of efficiency did not follow a fixed trend over the study time and were constantly changing. In the stochastic frontier's production function analysis, the technical efficiency of the studied industry during the study period was estimated to be 0.389. Conclusion: This study represented hospitals with the highest and lowest efficiency. Reference hospitals (more efficient states) were indicated for the inefficient centers. According to the findings, it was found that in the hospitals that do not operate efficiently, there is a capacity to improve the technical efficiency by removing excess inputs without changes in the level of outputs. However, by the optimal allocation of resources in most studied hospitals, very important economy of scale can be achieved. PMID:26793657

A Management Information System Model for Program Management. Ph.D. Thesis - Oklahoma State Univ.; [Computerized Systems Analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shipman, D. L.

1972-01-01

The development of a model to simulate the information system of a program management type of organization is reported. The model statistically determines the following parameters: type of messages, destinations, delivery durations, type processing, processing durations, communication channels, outgoing messages, and priorites. The total management information system of the program management organization is considered, including formal and informal information flows and both facilities and equipment. The model is written in General Purpose System Simulation 2 computer programming language for use on the Univac 1108, Executive 8 computer. The model is simulated on a daily basis and collects queue and resource utilization statistics for each decision point. The statistics are then used by management to evaluate proposed resource allocations, to evaluate proposed changes to the system, and to identify potential problem areas. The model employs both empirical and theoretical distributions which are adjusted to simulate the information flow being studied.

Resource allocation. The cost of care: two troublesome cases in health care ethics.

PubMed

Armstrong, C R; Whitlock, R

1998-01-01

With the cost of health care rising rapidly, both physicians and administrators regularly face resource allocation decisions. Under these conditions of relative scarcity, the equitable and appropriate distribution of limited resources becomes an ethical as well as a financial issue. Through ethical analysis, physician executives can assist their physician colleagues and fellow administrators to find rationally defensible answers to questions regarding the distribution of limited resources. Six criteria are frequently "weighted in the balance" by ethicists when analyzing whether justice is served in the distribution of a limited resource: need, equality, contribution, ability to pay, effort, and merit. The authors argue that, from an ethical standpoint, the best single criterion upon which one can base an allocation decision is that of merit, defined as the potential to benefit from the investment of additional resources.

Exploring the cognitive load of negative thinking: a novel dual-task experiment.

PubMed

Takano, Keisuke; Iijima, Yudai; Sakamoto, Shinji; Tanno, Yoshihiko

2014-12-01

Females are more likely to engage in the preoccupation of past negative experiences than males, which might contribute to their greater tendency toward depression. However, there is limited understanding regarding the cognitive basis for the negative autobiographical information processing of females. In the present study, we assessed the cognitive resources required for negative thinking, by using a novel dual-task paradigm that combined think-aloud and time-estimation tasks. Fifty-three Japanese undergraduate students were asked to think aloud about personal past or future emotional episodes for a particular duration. In addition, they were asked to estimate the duration of their speech. Their estimates were compared to the actual time taken, and the errors were used as indices of cognitive burden during the speech task. As compared to males, females exhibited greater judgment errors, particularly when thinking about their past negative experiences. This suggests that females allocate more attentional resources toward thinking about the past. Participants could rehearse the task during the time reproduction phase, and the quality of the rehearsal and their memory capacity might have influenced the accuracy of their duration judgment. Females tend to allocate more attentional resources than males to thinking about past negative episodes, which in turn might be associated with reduced availability of resources for central cognitive control processes such as inhibition of and switching away from processing of negative autobiographical information. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Digital Geography and the Race for the White House

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kenreich, Todd W.

2016-01-01

With the 2016 presidential election right around the corner, geography provides a dynamic view of the spatial patterns and processes that shape the electorate. The major presidential campaigns know that a winning strategy must use geography to make informed decisions about where to allocate limited resources such as money and staff. In the end,…

Albuquerque Public Schools Student Enrollment: History & Forecast 1954-1994. 1975 APS Planning Document 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Albuquerque Public Schools, NM.

The material in this report was developed primarily as a basis for better planning and allocation of limited resources in a district experiencing a declining enrollment for the foreseeable future. The charts were developed on the basis of historical enrollment information by grade level, and forecasts were based on a standard regression formula…

Targeted Funding for Educationally Disadvantaged Students: A Regression Discontinuity Estimate of the Impact on High School Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Gary T.; Fortner, C. Kevin; Thompson, Charles L.

2010-01-01

Evaluating the impacts of public school funding on student achievement has been an important objective for informing education policymaking but fraught with data and methodological limitations. Findings from prior research have been mixed at best, leaving policymakers with little advice about the benefits of allocating public resources to schools…

Open Learning: Resource Allocation and Control. Coombe Lodge Working Paper. Information Bank Number 1610.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Latcham, Jack

In an effort to demonstrate that open learning can be accommodated within existing funding mechanisms in British colleges of further and higher education, this paper discusses issues concerned with determining the cost of Flexistudy and open learning delivery systems. After a review of the difficulties of estimating precisely the costs of various…

Unmet Needs of Families of School-Aged Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Hilary K.; Ouellette-Kuntz, Helene; Hunter, Duncan; Kelley, Elizabeth; Cobigo, Virginie

2012-01-01

Background: To aid decision making regarding the allocation of limited resources, information is needed on the perceived unmet needs of parents of school-aged children with an autism spectrum disorder. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted of 101 Canadian families of school-aged children with an autism spectrum disorder.…

Effects of Text-Belief Consistency and Reading Task on the Strategic Validation of Multiple Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maier, Johanna; Richter, Tobias

2016-01-01

In the comprehension of multiple controversial scientific texts, readers with strong prior beliefs tend to construct a one-sided mental representation that is biased towards belief-consistent information. In the present study, we examined whether an argument in contrast to a summary task instruction can increase the resource allocation to and…

Faculty Consulting in Natural Sciences and Engineering: Between Formal and Informal Knowledge Transfer

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amara, Nabil; Landry, Rejean; Halilem, Norrin

2013-01-01

Academic consulting is a form of knowledge and technology transfer largely under-documented and under-studied that raises ethical and resources allocation issues. Based on a survey of 2,590 Canadian researchers in engineering and natural sciences, this paper explores three forms of academic consulting: (1) paid consulting; (2) unpaid consulting…

Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation with Effective Utilization of Polling Interval over WDM/TDM PON

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ni, Cuiping; Gan, Chaoqin; Gao, Ziyue

2014-12-01

WDM/TDM (wavelength-division multiplexing/time-division multiplexing) PON (passive optical network) appears to be an attractive solution for the next generation optical access networks. Dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) plays a crucial role in efficiently and fairly allocating the bandwidth among all users in WDM/TDM PON. In this paper, two dynamic bandwidth allocation schemes (DBA1 and DBA2) are proposed to eliminate the idle time of polling cycles (i.e. polling interval), improve bandwidth utilization and make full use of bandwidth resources. The two DBA schemes adjust the time slot of sending request information and make fair scheduling among users to achieve the effective utilization of polling interval in WDM/TDM PON. The simulation and theoretical analyses verify that the proposed schemes outperform the conventional DBA scheme. We also make comparisons between the two schemes in terms of bandwidth utilization and average packet delay to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the scheme of DBA2.

Neurophysiological measures of involuntary and voluntary attention allocation and dispositional differences in need for cognition.

PubMed

Enge, Sören; Fleischhauer, Monika; Brocke, Burkhard; Strobel, Alexander

2008-06-01

Need for cognition (NFC) refers to stable individual differences in the intrinsic motivation to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors and has been a useful predictor of dispositional differences in information processing. Although cognitive resource allocation conceptualized as cognitive effort is assumed to be the key mediator of NFC-specific processing, to date no research has systematically addressed its underpinnings. Using a neurocognitive paradigm and recording event-related potentials associated with bottom-up and top-down-driven aspects of attention, the present research contributes to filling this gap. In Study 1, high-NFC individuals showed larger P3a amplitudes to contextually novel events, indicating greater involuntary (automatic) attention allocation. This effect was replicated in Study 2, where NFC also was positively correlated with the P3b to target stimuli, indicating voluntary (controlled) processes of attention allocation. Thus, our findings provide first evidence for neurophysiological correlates of NFC and can improve the understanding of NFC-specific processing.

Real-time information management environment (RIME)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

DeCleene, Brian T.; Griffin, Sean; Matchett, Garry; Niejadlik, Richard

2000-08-01

Whereas data mining and exploitation improve the quality and quantity of information available to the user, there remains a mission requirement to assist the end-user in managing the access to this information and ensuring that the appropriate information is delivered to the right user in time to make decisions and take action. This paper discusses TASC's federated architecture to next- generation information management, contrasts the approach against emerging technologies, and quantifies the performance gains. This architecture and implementation, known as Real-time Information Management Environment (RIME), is based on two key concepts: information utility and content-based channelization. The introduction of utility allows users to express the importance and delivery requirements of their information needs in the context of their mission. Rather than competing for resources on a first-come/first-served basis, the infrastructure employs these utility functions to dynamically react to unanticipated loading by optimizing the delivered information utility. Furthermore, commander's resource policies shape these functions to ensure that resources are allocated according to military doctrine. Using information about the desired content, channelization identifies opportunities to aggregate users onto shared channels reducing redundant transmissions. Hence, channelization increases the information throughput of the system and balances sender/receiver processing load.

Tying Resources to Results: Integrating the Resource Allocation Process into Planning and Management in a Public Two-Year College.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bers, John A.

A budgetary process that serves a college in an era of expansion is likely to break down when the resource base is reduced and tough-minded decisions about priorities are required. This paper describes a resource allocation system that Gadsden State Junior College developed and tested over a two-year period to respond to fiscal contraction. Key…

National assessment of geologic carbon dioxide storage resources: allocations of assessed areas to Federal lands

USGS Publications Warehouse

Buursink, Marc L.; Cahan, Steven M.; Warwick, Peter D.

2015-01-01

Following the geologic basin-scale assessment of technically accessible carbon dioxide storage resources in onshore areas and State waters of the United States, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that an area of about 130 million acres (or about 200,000 square miles) of Federal lands overlies these storage resources. Consequently, about 18 percent of the assessed area associated with storage resources is allocated to Federal land management. Assessed areas are allocated to four other general land-ownership categories as follows: State lands about 4.5 percent, Tribal lands about 2.4 percent, private and other lands about 72 percent, and offshore areas about 2.6 percent.

Market Model for Resource Allocation in Emerging Sensor Networks with Reinforcement Learning

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yue; Song, Bin; Zhang, Ying; Du, Xiaojiang; Guizani, Mohsen

2016-01-01

Emerging sensor networks (ESNs) are an inevitable trend with the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), and intend to connect almost every intelligent device. Therefore, it is critical to study resource allocation in such an environment, due to the concern of efficiency, especially when resources are limited. By viewing ESNs as multi-agent environments, we model them with an agent-based modelling (ABM) method and deal with resource allocation problems with market models, after describing users’ patterns. Reinforcement learning methods are introduced to estimate users’ patterns and verify the outcomes in our market models. Experimental results show the efficiency of our methods, which are also capable of guiding topology management. PMID:27916841

A note on resource allocation scheduling with group technology and learning effects on a single machine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, Yuan-Yuan; Wang, Ji-Bo; Ji, Ping; He, Hongyu

2017-09-01

In this article, single-machine group scheduling with learning effects and convex resource allocation is studied. The goal is to find the optimal job schedule, the optimal group schedule, and resource allocations of jobs and groups. For the problem of minimizing the makespan subject to limited resource availability, it is proved that the problem can be solved in polynomial time under the condition that the setup times of groups are independent. For the general setup times of groups, a heuristic algorithm and a branch-and-bound algorithm are proposed, respectively. Computational experiments show that the performance of the heuristic algorithm is fairly accurate in obtaining near-optimal solutions.

75 FR 76975 - 2015 Resource Pool-Sierra Nevada Region

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-10

...The Western Area Power Administration (Western), a Federal power marketing administration of DOE, announces the Final 2015 Resource Pool allocations pursuant to its 2004 Power Marketing Plan (Marketing Plan) for the Sierra Nevada Customer Service Region (SNR). This notice includes a summary of the comments received on Western's proposed 2015 Resource Pool allocations and Western's responses.

The Unconscious Allocation of Cognitive Resources to Task-Relevant and Task-Irrelevant Thoughts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuldas, Seffetullah; Hashim, Shahabuddin; Ismail, Hairul Nizam; Samsudin, Mohd Ali; Bakar, Zainudin Abu

2014-01-01

Conscious allocation of cognitive resources to task-relevant thoughts is necessary for learning. However, task-irrelevant thoughts often associated with fear of failure can enter the mind and interfere with learning. Effects like this prompt the question of whether or not learners consciously shift their cognitive resources from task-relevant to…

An integrated model of water resources optimization allocation based on projection pursuit model - Grey wolf optimization method in a transboundary river basin

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Sen; Lu, Hongwei

2018-04-01

Under the effects of global change, water crisis ranks as the top global risk in the future decade, and water conflict in transboundary river basins as well as the geostrategic competition led by it is most concerned. This study presents an innovative integrated PPMGWO model of water resources optimization allocation in a transboundary river basin, which is integrated through the projection pursuit model (PPM) and Grey wolf optimization (GWO) method. This study uses the Songhua River basin and 25 control units as examples, adopting the PPMGWO model proposed in this study to allocate the water quantity. Using water consumption in all control units in the Songhua River basin in 2015 as reference to compare with optimization allocation results of firefly algorithm (FA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms as well as the PPMGWO model, results indicate that the average difference between corresponding allocation results and reference values are 0.195 bil m3, 0.151 bil m3, and 0.085 bil m3, respectively. Obviously, the average difference of the PPMGWO model is the lowest and its optimization allocation result is closer to reality, which further confirms the reasonability, feasibility, and accuracy of the PPMGWO model. And then the PPMGWO model is adopted to simulate allocation of available water quantity in Songhua River basin in 2018, 2020, and 2030. The simulation results show water quantity which could be allocated in all controls demonstrates an overall increasing trend with reasonable and equal exploitation and utilization of water resources in the Songhua River basin in future. In addition, this study has a certain reference value and application meaning to comprehensive management and water resources allocation in other transboundary river basins.

Introducing priority setting and resource allocation in home and community care programs.

PubMed

Urquhart, Bonnie; Mitton, Craig; Peacock, Stuart

2008-01-01

To use evidence from research to identify and implement priority setting and resource allocation that incorporates both ethical practices and economic principles. Program budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) is based on two key economic principles: opportunity cost (i.e. doing one thing instead of another) and the margin (i.e. resource allocation should result in maximum benefit for available resources). An ethical framework for priority setting and resource allocation known as Accountability for Reasonableness (A4R) focuses on making sure that resource allocations are based on a fair decision-making process. It includes the following four conditions: publicity; relevance; appeals; and enforcement. More recent literature on the topic suggests that a fifth condition, that of empowerment, should be added to the Framework. The 2007-08 operating budget for Home and Community Care, excluding the residential sector, was developed using PBMA and incorporating the A4R conditions. Recommendations developed using PBMA were forwarded to the Executive Committee, approved and implemented for the 2007-08 fiscal year operating budget. In addition there were two projects approved for approximately $200,000. PBMA is an improvement over previous practice. Managers of Home and Community Care are committed to using the process for the 2008-09 fiscal year operating budget and expanding its use to include mental health and addictions services. In addition, managers of public health prevention and promotion services are considering using the process.

Fair Resource Allocation to Health Research: Priority Topics for Bioethics Scholarship.

PubMed

Pratt, Bridget; Hyder, Adnan A

2017-07-01

This article draws attention to the limited amount of scholarship on what constitutes fairness and equity in resource allocation to health research by individual funders. It identifies three key decisions of ethical significance about resource allocation that research funders make regularly and calls for prioritizing scholarship on those topics - namely, how health resources should be fairly apportioned amongst public health and health care delivery versus health research, how health research resources should be fairly allocated between health problems experienced domestically versus other health problems typically experienced by disadvantaged populations outside the funder's country, and how domestic and non-domestic health research funding should be further apportioned to different areas, e.g. types of research and recipients. These three topics should be priorities for bioethics research because their outcomes have a substantial bearing on the achievement of health justice. The proposed agenda aims to move discussion on the ethics of health research funding beyond its current focus on the mismatch between worldwide basic and clinical research investment and the global burden of disease. Individual funders' decision-making on whether and to what extent to allocate resources to non-domestic health research, health systems research, research on the social determinants of health, capacity development, and recipients in certain countries should also be the focus of ethical scrutiny. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Working memory management and predicted utility

PubMed Central

Chatham, Christopher H.; Badre, David

2013-01-01

Given the limited capacity of working memory (WM), its resources should be allocated strategically. One strategy is filtering, whereby access to WM is granted preferentially to items with the greatest utility. However, reallocation of WM resources might be required if the utility of maintained information subsequently declines. Here, we present behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging evidence that human participants track changes in the predicted utility of information in WM. First, participants demonstrated behavioral costs when the utility of items already maintained in WM declined and resources should be reallocated. An adapted Q-learning model indicated that these costs scaled with the historical utility of individual items. Finally, model-based neuroimaging demonstrated that frontal cortex tracked the utility of items to be maintained in WM, whereas ventral striatum tracked changes in the utility of items maintained in WM to the degree that these items are no longer useful. Our findings suggest that frontostriatal mechanisms track the utility of information in WM, and that these dynamics may predict delays in the removal of information from WM. PMID:23882196

The Juggling Act of Supervision in Community Mental Health: Implications for Supporting Evidence-Based Treatment.

PubMed

Dorsey, Shannon; Pullmann, Michael D; Kerns, Suzanne E U; Jungbluth, Nathaniel; Meza, Rosemary; Thompson, Kelly; Berliner, Lucy

2017-11-01

Supervisors are an underutilized resource for supporting evidence-based treatments (EBTs) in community mental health. Little is known about how EBT-trained supervisors use supervision time. Primary aims were to describe supervision (e.g., modality, frequency), examine functions of individual supervision, and examine factors associated with time allocation to supervision functions. Results from 56 supervisors and 207 clinicians from 25 organizations indicate high prevalence of individual supervision, often alongside group and informal supervision. Individual supervision serves a wide range of functions, with substantial variation at the supervisor-level. Implementation climate was the strongest predictor of time allocation to clinical and EBT-relevant functions.

PROCRU: A model for analyzing flight crew procedures in approach to landing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Baron, S.; Zacharias, G.; Muraidharan, R.; Lancraft, R.

1982-01-01

A model for the human performance of approach and landing tasks that would provide a means for systematic exploration of questions concerning the impact of procedural and equipment design and the allocation of resources in the cockpit on performance and safety in approach-to-landing is discussed. A system model is needed that accounts for the interactions of crew, procedures, vehicle, approach geometry, and environment. The issues of interest revolve principally around allocation of tasks in the cockpit and crew performance with respect to the cognitive aspects of the tasks. The model must, therefore, deal effectively with information processing and decision-making aspects of human performance.

Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) 5: developing a model for evidence-driven resource allocation in a local healthcare setting.

PubMed

Harris, Claire; Allen, Kelly; Waller, Cara; Green, Sally; King, Richard; Ramsey, Wayne; Kelly, Cate; Thiagarajan, Malar

2017-05-10

This is the fifth in a series of papers reporting Sustainability in Health care by Allocating Resources Effectively (SHARE) in a local healthcare setting. This paper synthesises the findings from Phase One of the SHARE Program and presents a model to be implemented and evaluated in Phase Two. Monash Health, a large healthcare network in Melbourne Australia, sought to establish an organisation-wide systematic evidence-based program for disinvestment. In the absence of guidance from the literature, the Centre for Clinical Effectiveness, an in-house 'Evidence Based Practice Support Unit', was asked to explore concepts and practices related to disinvestment, consider the implications for a local health service and identify potential settings and methods for decision-making. Mixed methods were used to capture the relevant information. These included literature reviews; online questionnaire, interviews and structured workshops with a range of stakeholders; and consultation with experts in disinvestment, health economics and health program evaluation. Using the principles of evidence-based change, the project team worked with health service staff, consumers and external experts to synthesise the findings from published literature and local research and develop proposals, frameworks and plans. Multiple influencing factors were extracted from these findings. The implications were both positive and negative and addressed aspects of the internal and external environments, human factors, empirical decision-making, and practical applications. These factors were considered in establishment of the new program; decisions reached through consultation with stakeholders were used to define four program components, their aims and objectives, relationships between components, principles that underpin the program, implementation and evaluation plans, and preconditions for success and sustainability. The components were Systems and processes, Disinvestment projects, Support services, and Program evaluation and research. A model for a systematic approach to evidence-based resource allocation in a local health service was developed. A robust evidence-based investigation of the research literature and local knowledge with a range of stakeholders resulted in rich information with strong consistent messages. At the completion of Phase One, synthesis of the findings enabled development of frameworks and plans and all preconditions for exploration of the four main aims in Phase Two were met.

Trade-offs between reproductive allocation and storage in species of Oenothera L. (Onagraceae) native to Argentina

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vilela, Alejandra; Cariaga, Rodrigo; González-Paleo, Luciana; Ravetta, Damián

2008-01-01

A trade-off between reproduction and survival arises because current reproduction diminishes levels of a limiting resource such that less can be placed in storage organs for the survival of an organism during the unfavorable season. Oenothera is a particularly suited genus for studying those kind of trade-offs because it contains species with different life-history strategies (annual, biennial and perennial). Since allocation to leaves is a major factor associated with changes in life-history, here we tested the hypothesis that Oenothera leaf attributes would affect plant reproductive effort and therefore, root reserves. We selected two groups of taxa differing in their leaf area ratio (low- and high-LAR) and we compared their pattern of resource allocation to growth, reproduction and storage. Path analysis confirmed our hypothesis that LAR is the most important variable in explaining variation in allocation to reproduction or storage. The group with high allocation to leaves assigned resources preferentially to storage while the other group allocated more resources to reproduction, as predicted. A trade-off between reproduction and storage was only confirmed for the high-LAR group. The low-LAR group showed the life-history tactic of annual plants, while the high-LAR group exhibited a strategy generally associated with perenniality.

Modeling Hydrological Processes in New Mexico-Texas-Mexico Border Region

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samimi, M.; Jahan, N. T.; Mirchi, A.

2017-12-01

Efficient allocation of limited water resources to competing use sectors is becoming increasingly critical for water-scarce regions. Understanding natural and anthropogenic processes affecting hydrological processes is key for efficient water management. We used Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to model governing hydrologic processes in New Mexico-Texas-Mexico border region. Our study area includes the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID), which manages water resources to support irrigated agriculture. The region is facing water resources challenges associated with chronic water scarcity, over-allocation, diminishing water supply, and growing water demand. Agricultural activities rely on conjunctive use of Rio Grande River water supply and groundwater withdrawal. The model is calibrated and validated under baseline conditions in the arid and semi-arid climate in order to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector and regional water availability. We highlight the importance of calibrating the crop growth parameters, evapotranspiration, and groundwater recharge to provide a realistic representation of the hydrological processes and water availability in the region. Furthermore, limitations of the model and its utility to inform stakeholders will be discussed.

Critical phenomena in communication/computation networks with various topologies and suboptimal to optimal resource allocation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cogoni, Marco; Busonera, Giovanni; Anedda, Paolo; Zanetti, Gianluigi

2015-01-01

We generalize previous studies on critical phenomena in communication networks [1,2] by adding computational capabilities to the nodes. In our model, a set of tasks with random origin, destination and computational structure is distributed on a computational network, modeled as a graph. By varying the temperature of a Metropolis Montecarlo, we explore the global latency for an optimal to suboptimal resource assignment at a given time instant. By computing the two-point correlation function for the local overload, we study the behavior of the correlation distance (both for links and nodes) while approaching the congested phase: a transition from peaked to spread g(r) is seen above a critical (Montecarlo) temperature Tc. The average latency trend of the system is predicted by averaging over several network traffic realizations while maintaining a spatially detailed information for each node: a sharp decrease of performance is found over Tc independently of the workload. The globally optimized computational resource allocation and network routing defines a baseline for a future comparison of the transition behavior with respect to existing routing strategies [3,4] for different network topologies.

Resource allocation in public health practice: a national survey of local public health officials.

PubMed

Baum, Nancy M; DesRoches, Catherine; Campbell, Eric G; Goold, Susan Dorr

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to gain an empirical understanding of the types of allocation decisions local health officials (LHOs) make and the factors that influence those allocation decisions. We conducted a national survey of LHOs in the United States in 2008 to 2009. The sample was stratified by the size of the population served by the department. We merged our data with data from the 2008 National Association of County and City Health Officials Profile survey. Descriptive statistics were generated using weighted data. Our final sample size was 608 respondents, with an average of 10 years experience. The LHOs reported little shifting of resources among population groups but greater capacity to redirect staffing time. Less than half of LHOs reported using economic analyses or conducting needs assessments when setting priorities. Having sole provider status in a community strongly influenced LHOs' allocation decisions. In addition, the effectiveness of activities, previous budget allocations, and input from boards of health were influential factors in allocation decisions. Public expectations were moderately to very influential, but direct public input had a low impact on allocation decisions. Survey findings provide a clearer understanding of how LHOs fulfill their obligations as stewards of public health resources and ensure effective activities and access to needed services. It may be useful to assess the value of more structured allocation methods (eg, decision frameworks) in the allocation process. Expanding opportunities for public engagement in priority setting may also be valuable for difficult allocation decisions.

Economic evaluation of interventions designed to reduce Clostridium difficile infection.

PubMed

Brain, David; Yakob, Laith; Barnett, Adrian; Riley, Thomas; Clements, Archie; Halton, Kate; Graves, Nicholas

2018-01-01

Healthcare decision-makers are increasingly expected to balance increasing demand for health services with a finite budget. The role of economic evaluation in healthcare is increasing and this research provides decision-makers with new information about the management of Clostridium difficile infection, from an economic perspective. A model-based economic evaluation was undertaken to identify the most cost-effective healthcare intervention relating to the reduction of Clostridium difficile transmission. Efficacy evidence was synthesised from the literature and was used to inform the effectiveness of both bundled approaches and stand-alone interventions, where appropriate intervention combinations were coupled together. Changes in health outcomes were estimated by combining information about intervention effectiveness and its subsequent impact on quality of life. A bundled approach of improving hand hygiene and environmental cleaning produces the best combination of increased health benefits and cost-savings. It has the highest mean net monetary benefit when compared to all other interventions. This intervention remains the optimal decision under different clinical circumstances, such as when mortality rate and patient length of stay are increased. Bundled interventions offered the best opportunity for health improvements. These findings provide healthcare decision-makers with novel information about the allocation of scarce resources relating to Clostridium difficile. If investments are not made in interventions that clearly yield gains in health outcomes, the allocation and use of scarce healthcare resources is inappropriate and improvements in health outcomes will be forgone.

Using auditory pre-information to solve the cocktail-party problem: electrophysiological evidence for age-specific differences.

PubMed

Getzmann, Stephan; Lewald, Jörg; Falkenstein, Michael

2014-01-01

Speech understanding in complex and dynamic listening environments requires (a) auditory scene analysis, namely auditory object formation and segregation, and (b) allocation of the attentional focus to the talker of interest. There is evidence that pre-information is actively used to facilitate these two aspects of the so-called "cocktail-party" problem. Here, a simulated multi-talker scenario was combined with electroencephalography to study scene analysis and allocation of attention in young and middle-aged adults. Sequences of short words (combinations of brief company names and stock-price values) from four talkers at different locations were simultaneously presented, and the detection of target names and the discrimination between critical target values were assessed. Immediately prior to speech sequences, auditory pre-information was provided via cues that either prepared auditory scene analysis or attentional focusing, or non-specific pre-information was given. While performance was generally better in younger than older participants, both age groups benefited from auditory pre-information. The analysis of the cue-related event-related potentials revealed age-specific differences in the use of pre-cues: Younger adults showed a pronounced N2 component, suggesting early inhibition of concurrent speech stimuli; older adults exhibited a stronger late P3 component, suggesting increased resource allocation to process the pre-information. In sum, the results argue for an age-specific utilization of auditory pre-information to improve listening in complex dynamic auditory environments.

Using auditory pre-information to solve the cocktail-party problem: electrophysiological evidence for age-specific differences

PubMed Central

Getzmann, Stephan; Lewald, Jörg; Falkenstein, Michael

2014-01-01

Speech understanding in complex and dynamic listening environments requires (a) auditory scene analysis, namely auditory object formation and segregation, and (b) allocation of the attentional focus to the talker of interest. There is evidence that pre-information is actively used to facilitate these two aspects of the so-called “cocktail-party” problem. Here, a simulated multi-talker scenario was combined with electroencephalography to study scene analysis and allocation of attention in young and middle-aged adults. Sequences of short words (combinations of brief company names and stock-price values) from four talkers at different locations were simultaneously presented, and the detection of target names and the discrimination between critical target values were assessed. Immediately prior to speech sequences, auditory pre-information was provided via cues that either prepared auditory scene analysis or attentional focusing, or non-specific pre-information was given. While performance was generally better in younger than older participants, both age groups benefited from auditory pre-information. The analysis of the cue-related event-related potentials revealed age-specific differences in the use of pre-cues: Younger adults showed a pronounced N2 component, suggesting early inhibition of concurrent speech stimuli; older adults exhibited a stronger late P3 component, suggesting increased resource allocation to process the pre-information. In sum, the results argue for an age-specific utilization of auditory pre-information to improve listening in complex dynamic auditory environments. PMID:25540608

Validation of ACG Case-mix for equitable resource allocation in Swedish primary health care.

PubMed

Zielinski, Andrzej; Kronogård, Maria; Lenhoff, Håkan; Halling, Anders

2009-09-18

Adequate resource allocation is an important factor to ensure equity in health care. Previous reimbursement models have been based on age, gender and socioeconomic factors. An explanatory model based on individual need of primary health care (PHC) has not yet been used in Sweden to allocate resources. The aim of this study was to examine to what extent the ACG case-mix system could explain concurrent costs in Swedish PHC. Diagnoses were obtained from electronic PHC records of inhabitants in Blekinge County (approx. 150,000) listed with public PHC (approx. 120,000) for three consecutive years, 2004-2006. The inhabitants were then classified into six different resource utilization bands (RUB) using the ACG case-mix system. The mean costs for primary health care were calculated for each RUB and year. Using linear regression models and log-cost as dependent variable the adjusted R2 was calculated in the unadjusted model (gender) and in consecutive models where age, listing with specific PHC and RUB were added. In an additional model the ACG groups were added. Gender, age and listing with specific PHC explained 14.48-14.88% of the variance in individual costs for PHC. By also adding information on level of co-morbidity, as measured by the ACG case-mix system, to specific PHC the adjusted R2 increased to 60.89-63.41%. The ACG case-mix system explains patient costs in primary care to a high degree. Age and gender are important explanatory factors, but most of the variance in concurrent patient costs was explained by the ACG case-mix system.

Administrators' Decisions about Resource Allocation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knight, William E.; Folkins, John W.; Hakel, Milton D.; Kennell, Richard P.

2011-01-01

Do academic administrators make decisions about resource allocation differently depending on the discipline receiving the funding? Does an administrator's academic identity influence these decisions? This study explored those questions with a sample of 1,690 academic administrators at doctoral-research universities. Participants used fictional…

Effects of parental care on resource allocation into immune defense and buccal microbiota in mouthbrooding cichlid fishes.

PubMed

Keller, Isabel S; Bayer, Till; Salzburger, Walter; Roth, Olivia

2018-05-01

Sexual dimorphism is founded upon a resource allocation trade-off between investments in reproduction versus other life-history traits including the immune system. In species with conventional parental care roles, theory predicts that males maximize their lifetime reproductive success by allocating resources toward sexual selection, while females achieve this through prolonging their lifespan. Here, we examine the interrelation between sexual dimorphism and parental care strategies in closely related maternal and biparental mouthbrooding cichlid fishes from East African Lake Tanganyika. We measured cellular immune parameters, examined the relative expression of 28 immune system and life history-related candidate genes and analyzed the microbiota composition in the buccal cavity. According to our predictions, maternal mouthbrooders are more sexually dimorphic in immune parameters than biparental mouthbrooders, which has possibly arisen through a differential resource allocation into parental care versus secondary sexual traits. Biparental mouthbrooders, on the other hand, which share the costs of parental care, feature an upregulated adaptive immune response and stronger antiviral properties, while their inflammation response is reduced. Overall, our results suggest a differential resource allocation trade-off between the two modes of parental investment. © 2018 The Author(s). Evolution © 2018 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Optimal allocation of resources for suppressing epidemic spreading on networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Hanshuang; Li, Guofeng; Zhang, Haifeng; Hou, Zhonghuai

2017-07-01

Efficient allocation of limited medical resources is crucial for controlling epidemic spreading on networks. Based on the susceptible-infected-susceptible model, we solve the optimization problem of how best to allocate the limited resources so as to minimize prevalence, providing that the curing rate of each node is positively correlated to its medical resource. By quenched mean-field theory and heterogeneous mean-field (HMF) theory, we prove that an epidemic outbreak will be suppressed to the greatest extent if the curing rate of each node is directly proportional to its degree, under which the effective infection rate λ has a maximal threshold λcopt=1 / , where is the average degree of the underlying network. For a weak infection region (λ ≳λcopt ), we combine perturbation theory with the Lagrange multiplier method (LMM) to derive the analytical expression of optimal allocation of the curing rates and the corresponding minimized prevalence. For a general infection region (λ >λcopt ), the high-dimensional optimization problem is converted into numerically solving low-dimensional nonlinear equations by the HMF theory and LMM. Counterintuitively, in the strong infection region the low-degree nodes should be allocated more medical resources than the high-degree nodes to minimize prevalence. Finally, we use simulated annealing to validate the theoretical results.

Decision maker perceptions of resource allocation processes in Canadian health care organizations: a national survey

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Resource allocation is a key challenge for healthcare decision makers. While several case studies of organizational practice exist, there have been few large-scale cross-organization comparisons. Methods Between January and April 2011, we conducted an on-line survey of senior decision makers within regional health authorities (and closely equivalent organizations) across all Canadian provinces and territories. We received returns from 92 individual managers, from 60 out of 89 organizations in total. The survey inquired about structures, process features, and behaviours related to organization-wide resource allocation decisions. We focus here on three main aspects: type of process, perceived fairness, and overall rating. Results About one-half of respondents indicated that their organization used a formal process for resource allocation, while the others reported that political or historical factors were predominant. Seventy percent (70%) of respondents self-reported that their resource allocation process was fair and just over one-half assessed their process as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. This paper explores these findings in greater detail and assesses them in context of the larger literature. Conclusion Data from this large-scale cross-jurisdictional survey helps to illustrate common challenges and areas of positive performance among Canada’s health system leadership teams. PMID:23819598

Water Market-scale Agricultural Planning: Promoting Competing Water Resource Use Efficiency Through Agro-Economics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Delorit, J. D.; Block, P. J.

2017-12-01

Where strong water rights law and corresponding markets exist as a coupled econo-legal mechanism, water rights holders are permitted to trade allocations to promote economic water resource use efficiency. In locations where hydrologic uncertainty drives the assignment of annual per-water right allocation values by water resource managers, collaborative water resource decision making by water rights holders, specifically those involved in agricultural production, can result in both resource and economic Pareto efficiency. Such is the case in semi-arid North Chile, where interactions between representative farmer groups, treated as competitive bilateral monopolies, and modeled at water market-scale, can provide both price and water right allocation distribution signals for unregulated, temporary water right leasing markets. For the range of feasible per-water right allocation values, a coupled agricultural-economic model is developed to describe the equilibrium distribution of water, the corresponding market price of water rights and the net surplus generated by collaboration between competing agricultural uses. Further, this research describes a per-water right inflection point for allocations where economic efficiency is not possible, and where price negotiation among competing agricultural uses is required. An investigation of the effects of water right supply and demand inequality at the market-scale is completed to characterize optimal market performance under existing water rights law. The broader insights of this research suggest that water rights holders engaged in agriculture can achieve economic benefits from forming crop-type cooperatives and by accurately assessing the economic value of allocation.

The Veterans Health Administration: quality, value, accountability, and information as transforming strategies for patient-centered care.

PubMed

Perlin, Johnathan B; Kolodner, Robert M; Roswell, Robert H

2005-01-01

The Veterans Health Administration is the United States' largest integrated health system. Once disparaged as a bureaucracy providing mediocre care, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reinvented itself during the past decade through a policy shift mandating structural and organizational change, rationalization of resource allocation, explicit measurement and accountability for quality and value, and development of an information infrastructure supporting the needs of patients, clinicians, and administrators. Today, the VA is recognized for leadership in clinical informatics and performance improvement, cares for more patients with proportionally fewer resources, and sets national benchmarks in patient satisfaction and for 18 indicators of quality in disease prevention and treatment.

The Veterans Health Administration: quality, value, accountability, and information as transforming strategies for patient-centered care.

PubMed

Perlin, Jonathan B; Kolodner, Robert M; Roswell, Robert H

2004-11-01

The Veterans Health Administration is the United States' largest integrated health system. Once disparaged as a bureaucracy providing mediocre care, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reinvented itself during the past decade through a policy shift mandating structural and organizational change, rationalization of resource allocation, explicit measurement and accountability for quality and value, and development of an information infrastructure supporting the needs of patients, clinicians, and administrators. Today, the VA is recognized for leadership in clinical informatics and performance improvement, cares for more patients with proportionally fewer resources, and sets national benchmarks in patient satisfaction and for 18 indicators of quality in disease prevention and treatment.

Does availability of mental health resources prevent recurrent suicidal behavior? An ecological analysis.

PubMed

Cooper, Sara L; Lezotte, Dennis; Jacobellis, Jillian; Diguiseppi, Carolyn

2006-08-01

This study examines whether availability of mental health resources in the county of residence is associated with subsequent suicidal behavior after a previous suicide attempt. Among 10,922 individuals who attempted suicide in Colorado between 1998 and 2002, residence in a county that offered a minimum safety-net of mental health services significantly reduced the risk of suicidal behavior for at least 1 year after the index attempt. Safety-net services included mental health treatment, crisis treatment, and case management. These results suggest one strategy for prevention of suicidal behavior that could inform state-level health policy development and resource allocation.

Family Resource Allocation after Firstborns Leave Home: Implications for Secondborns' Academic Functioning.

PubMed

Jensen, Alexander C; Whiteman, Shawn D; Bernard, Julia M; McHale, Susan M

2017-09-01

This study assessed secondborn adolescents' perceptions of changes in the allocation of family resources following their firstborn siblings' departure from home after high school, and whether perceived changes were related to changes over 1 year in secondborns' academic functioning. Participants were secondborn siblings (mean age = 16.58, SD = 0.91) from 115 families in which the older sibling had left the family home in the previous year. Allocation of resources was measured via coded qualitative interviews. Most (77%) secondborns reported increases in at least one type of family resource (i.e., parental companionship, attention, material goods), and many reported an increase in multiple types of resources in the year following their older sibling's departure. Consistent with resource dilution theory, perceptions of increases in fathers' companionship, fathers' attention, and mothers' companionship were related to improvements over time in secondborns' academic functioning. © 2015 Family Process Institute.

A decision-analytic approach to the optimal allocation of resources for endangered species consultation

USGS Publications Warehouse

Converse, Sarah J.; Shelley, Kevin J.; Morey, Steve; Chan, Jeffrey; LaTier, Andrea; Scafidi, Carolyn; Crouse, Deborah T.; Runge, Michael C.

2011-01-01

The resources available to support conservation work, whether time or money, are limited. Decision makers need methods to help them identify the optimal allocation of limited resources to meet conservation goals, and decision analysis is uniquely suited to assist with the development of such methods. In recent years, a number of case studies have been described that examine optimal conservation decisions under fiscal constraints; here we develop methods to look at other types of constraints, including limited staff and regulatory deadlines. In the US, Section Seven consultation, an important component of protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, requires that federal agencies overseeing projects consult with federal biologists to avoid jeopardizing species. A benefit of consultation is negotiation of project modifications that lessen impacts on species, so staff time allocated to consultation supports conservation. However, some offices have experienced declining staff, potentially reducing the efficacy of consultation. This is true of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Washington Fish and Wildlife Office (WFWO) and its consultation work on federally-threatened bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). To improve effectiveness, WFWO managers needed a tool to help allocate this work to maximize conservation benefits. We used a decision-analytic approach to score projects based on the value of staff time investment, and then identified an optimal decision rule for how scored projects would be allocated across bins, where projects in different bins received different time investments. We found that, given current staff, the optimal decision rule placed 80% of informal consultations (those where expected effects are beneficial, insignificant, or discountable) in a short bin where they would be completed without negotiating changes. The remaining 20% would be placed in a long bin, warranting an investment of seven days, including time for negotiation. For formal consultations (those where expected effects are significant), 82% of projects would be placed in a long bin, with an average time investment of 15. days. The WFWO is using this decision-support tool to help allocate staff time. Because workload allocation decisions are iterative, we describe a monitoring plan designed to increase the tool's efficacy over time. This work has general application beyond Section Seven consultation, in that it provides a framework for efficient investment of staff time in conservation when such time is limited and when regulatory deadlines prevent an unconstrained approach. ?? 2010.

The influence of institutional discourses on the work of informal carers: an institutional ethnography from the perspective of informal carers.

PubMed

Øydgard, Guro Wisth

2017-09-07

The growing numbers of seniors worldwide and the need for support and services that follow from a higher standard of living have led to an increased focus on scarce benefits and limited human resources. At the same time, many western countries have had to make welfare cuts to balance budgets. This has brought the contributions of informal carers to the fore. Thus far, the focus has generally been on the need for the informal carers to receive information and support; to enable them to contribute. The study is designed as an institutional ethnography. The article describes the social processes of informal caregiving and how it interacts with formal caregiving, from the perspective of informal carers. The research question for the study is How do institutional discourses on the work of informal carers influence informal carework? Data for the article comes from qualitative semi-structured interviews with 26 informal carers caring for persons with dementia in Norway, and with 7 administrators working in the allocation divisions of five different municipalities. The results demonstrate how three institutional discourses of informal carers' work influence the allocation divisions' practices and the work of informal carers in caring for their next of kin. The three discourses are categorised as moral and family obligation, shared care and task specificity. The informal carers want to contribute, as they feel a family and moral obligation to their next of kin. In the interaction with the allocation division, they find that the expectation that they will share in the carework and perform specific tasks forces them to perform care within a framework set by the public services. The findings suggest that further research should challenge how services are distributed and allocated rather than focus on how to enable informal carers to fulfil their role better. Because of their moral and family obligation, the informal carers do not have to be forced to perform certain tasks or parts of the shared care. To maintain the informal carers' carework and to fully utilise their contributions, public services would benefit from collaborating with the informal carers to fulfil the total care need of the person with dementia.