CAREER: Improving Service Systems through Real-time and Delayed Information

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports fundamental research intended to reduce congestion in critical services by enabling service providers to effectively disseminate information about delays to their customers. This research will advance the national health and prosperity by enabling better access to healthcare and emergency resources and reducing congestion in urban mobility. The availability of real time information through smartphone apps and display message technology has revolutionized the way many service systems interact with their customers. This project will advance the understanding of how such information can be used to improve the availability and accessibility of these services. The educational plan includes targeted outreach efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering research. This project will study queueing networks in which delayed information on system state is offered to potential customers. The research objective is to provide rigorous approximations of the performance of such systems. The research will incorporate a multinomial logit model choice model to emulate customer arrival behavior in exponential and general queueing models. Fluid limit and diffusion approximations will be used to model congested queues, where anticipated customer behavior will most heavily influence queueing dynamics. Finite capacity queueing models will also be studied in the context of delayed information. The approximations will be assessed via simulation as well as comparisons with observational data from real-world transportation systems and hospital emergency departments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.