Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to consider how to reach vulnerable communities with extended outreach services to improve vaccination uptake. The authors created an optimization model to align with decision-makers' objective to maximize immunization coverage within constrained budgets and deploy resources considering empirical data and endogenous demand.

A mixed integer program (MIP) determines the location of outreach sites and the resource deployment across health centers and outreach sites. The authors validated the model and evaluated the approach in consultation with UNICEF using a case study from The Gambia.

Results in The Gambia showed that by opening new outreach sites and optimizing resource allocation and scheduling, the Ministry of Health could increase immunization coverage from 91.0 to 97.1% under the same budget. Case study solutions informed managerial insights to drive gains in vaccine coverage even without the application of sophisticated tools.

The research extended resource constrained LMIC vaccine distribution modeling literature in two ways: first, endogenous calculation of demand as a function of distance to health facility location enabled the effective design of the vaccine network around convenience to the community and second, the model's resource bundle concept more accurately and flexibly represented complex requirements and costs for specific resources, which facilitated buy-in from stakeholders responsible for managing health budgets. The paper also demonstrated how to leverage empirical research and spatial analysis of publicly available demographic and geographic data to effectively represent important contextual factors.

The objective of the study is to develop a methodology to strategically rank store locations using criteria such as population, store site characteristics, economic considerations, competition and so on to select the most optimal retail convenience store location.

A case of National Capital Region, India, for a 24-h convenience store was considered for the study and the major criteria that affect the performance of a convenience store are identified, such as population characteristics, economic criteria, competition, consumer accessibility, store size, total cost, site attractiveness and security. Fuzzy AHP is utilized to find the weightage for each criteria and a combination of fuzzy TOPSIS and grey relational analysis (GRA) is applied to rank the alternative using these criteria weight. Further, results obtained are compared with results from fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy VIKOR methods. Sensitivity analysis is also performed for ensuring the robustness of the framework.

It is observed that outcomes do not change under various settling coefficient values, demonstrating that the methodology is very robust. The developed framework will be quite useful to diverse retailers looking to expand and generate substantial profits.

A large sample size of number of locations encourages generalization of results. Strategic ranking of the selected locations is carried out on a few selected criteria. The study was limited by the designated geographical area.

The study contributes to the few available articles on convenience store selection using combination of fuzzy AHP, fuzzy TOPSIS and GRA for a developing country.

The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.

The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.

Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.

Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.

Logistical facility location decisions can make a crucial difference in the success or failure of a company. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have recently become a very popular decision support system to help deal with facility location problems. However, until recently, GIS methodologies have not been fully embraced as a way to deal with new facility location problems in business logistics. This research makes a framework for categorizing empirical facility location problems based on the intensity of the involvement of GIS methodologies in decision making. This framework was built by analyzing facility location models and GIS methodologies. The research results revealed the depth of the embracement of GIS methodologies in logistics for determining new facility location decisions. In the new facility location decisions, spatial data inputs are almost always coupled with the visualization of the problems and solutions. However, the usage of GIS capability solely (i.e. suitability analysis) for problem solving has not been embraced at the same level. In most cases, the suitability analysis is used together with special optimization models for choosing among the multiple alternatives.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve intelligent superstore site selection. Yonghui Superstores partnered with Cardinal Operations to incorporate a tremendous amount of site-related information (e.g. points of interest, population density and features, distribution of competitors, transportation, commercial ecosystem, existing own-store network) into its store site optimization.

This paper showcases the integration of regression, optimization and machine learning approaches in site selection, which has proven practical and effective.

The result was the development of the “Yonghui Intelligent Site Selection System” that includes three modules: business district scoring, intelligent site engine and precision sales forecasting. The application of this system helps to significantly reduce the labor force required to visit and investigate all potential sites, circumvent the pitfalls associated with possibly biased experience or intuition-based decision making and achieve the same population coverage as competitors while needing only half the number of stores as its competitors.

To our knowledge, this project is among the first to integrate regression, optimization and machine learning approaches in site selection. There is innovation in optimization techniques.

Construction suffers from “peculiarities” that concern the temporary natures of the construction site, project teams and unique product design. Considering the digital transformation of construction, new solutions are being investigated that can provide consistent data between changing projects. One such source of data manifests in the tracking of logistics activities across the supply chain. Construction logistics is traditionally considered a site management activity focused solely on the “back end” of projects, but an expanded logistics focus can unlock new avenues of improvement. This study aims to understand the requirements and benefits of such a consistent thread of data.

From a research project with one of Australia’s largest contracting companies, this paper details a series of construction tracking tests as an empirical case study in using Bluetooth low energy aware tracking technology to capture data across the manufacture, delivery and assembly of a cross-laminated timber structural prototyping project.

The findings affirm the tracking of expanded logistics data can improve back-end performance in subsequent projects while also demonstrating the opportunity to inform a project’s unique front-end design phase. The case study demonstrates that as the reliability, range and battery life of tracking technologies improve, their incorporation into a broader range of construction activities provides invaluable data for improvement across projects.

As a live case study, this research offers unique insights into the potential of construction tracking to close the data loop from final site assembly back to the early project design phase, thus driving continual improvement from a holistic perspective.

The use of third-party logistics (TPL) setups in construction has increased but is still a new phenomenon. The purpose was to increase understanding of how structural and management dimensions are related in CLSs by describing how CTPL setups are used.

Ten dimensions to describe and structure CLSs were identified from the literature and used to structure a cross-case analysis of 13 Swedish CLSs.

The main findings are: (1) there are three typical initiators of CLSs: municipalities, developers and contractors; (2) CLSs are drivers for service differentiation and modularization among TPL providers as construction specific services are required; (3) CLSs play a new role in construction by coordinating logistics activities between the construction project and the vicinity of the site.

The study is based on 13 cases in the Swedish construction context. Additional studies of CLSs in other countries are needed.

The ten dimensions can be used as a guide in designing a CLS and in determining the order of design decisions. The identification and structuring of CTPL services also exemplify the variety of service offerings.

This is one of the first cross-case analyses of CLSs enabling the characterization of CTPL setups. This study identifies how different services included in the setup relate to the roles of SCM and logistics in construction.

Connecting autonomous drones to ground operations and services is a prerequisite for the adoption of scalable and sustainable drone services in the built environment. Despite the rapid advance in the field of autonomous drones, the development of ground infrastructure has received less attention. Contemporary airport design offers potential solutions for the infrastructure serving autonomous drone services. To that end, this paper aims to construct a framework for connecting air and ground operations for autonomous drone services. Furthermore, the paper defines the minimum facilities needed to support unmanned aerial vehicles for autonomous logistics and the collection of aerial data.

The paper reviews the state-of-the-art in airport design literature as the basis for analysing the guidelines of manned aviation applicable to the development of ground infrastructure for autonomous drone services. Socio-technical system analysis was used for identifying the service needs of drones.

The key findings are functional modularity based on the principles of airport design applies to micro-airports and modular service functions can be connected efficiently with an autonomous ground handling system in a sustainable manner addressing the concerns on maintenance, reliability and lifecycle.

As the study was limited to the airport design literature findings, the evolution of solutions may provide features supporting deviating approaches. The role of autonomy and cloud-based service processes are quintessentially different from the conventional airport design and are likely to impact real-life solutions as the area of future research.

The findings of this study provided a framework for establishing the connection between the airside and the landside for the operations of autonomous aerial services. The lack of such framework and ground infrastructure has hindered the large-scale adoption and easy-to-use solutions for sustainable logistics and aerial data collection for decision-making in the built environment.

The evolution of future autonomous aerial services should be accessible to all users, “democratising” the use of drones. The data collected by drones should comply with the privacy-preserving use of the data. The proposed ground infrastructure can contribute to offloading, storing and handling aerial data to support drone services’ acceptability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper describes the first design framework for creating a design concept for a modular and autonomous micro-airport system for unmanned aviation based on the applied functions of full-size conventional airports.

Having easy access to the flu and COVID-19 vaccination sites may be important for controlling the spread of the infection. Chicago implemented a broad strategy of opening COVID-19 vaccination locations across the city in a variety of locations.

We defined access as having vaccinations within one mile. Data came from the American Community Survey (ACS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Chicago Data Portal. We calculated the street-network distance from the population-weighted centroid of census tracts to the nearest vaccination sites before, during and post COVID-19 pandemic. We compared the demographics of census tracts within one mile to those greater than one mile during each period.

People age 65 and above and with disabilities saw significant decreases in flu vaccination site access to locations within one mile of their census tract in 2020–2021 compared to 2018–2019. The COVID-19 vaccination sites mimic these flu vaccination site patterns, suggesting a severe lack of geographic access for a group likely to experience limited mobility. Results combining instances of both flu and COVID-19 vaccination sites suggest that making COVID-19 vaccination sites available at flu shot site locations would significantly reduce the number of people with limited mobility lacking geographic access.

Policymakers should explore how this expanded network of vaccination locations could facilitate permanent improvements to access to vaccination sites for people with disabilities.