Related papers: Food Redistribution as Optimization
In this paper, we consider coordinated control of feeder vehicles for first and last mode transportation. The model is macroscopic with volumes of demands and supplies along with flows of vehicles. We propose a one-shot problem for…
In the aftermath of large-scale disasters, the scarcity of resources and the paralysis of infrastructure raise severe challenges to effective post-disaster recovery. Efficient coordination between shelters and victims plays a crucial role…
Equality-constrained models naturally arise in problems in which measurements are taken at different levels of resolution. The challenge in this setting is that the models usually induce a joint distribution which is intractable. Resorting…
Poor diet and nutrition in the United States has immense financial and health costs, and development of new tools for diet planning could help families better balance their financial and temporal constraints with the quality of their diet…
When facing an extreme stressor, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems typically respond reactively by creating surge capacity at facilities that are at or approaching their baseline capacity. However, creating individual…
Disaster response is critical to save lives and reduce damages in the aftermath of a disaster. Fundamental to disaster response operations is the management of disaster relief resources. To this end, a local agency (e.g., a local emergency…
We develop a Monte-Carlo based numerical method for solving discrete-time stochastic optimal control problems with inventory. These are optimal control problems in which the control affects only a deterministically evolving inventory…
The least-cost diet problem introduces students to optimization and linear programming, using the health consequences of food choice. We provide a graphical example, Excel workbook and Word template using actual data on item prices, food…
Quick response is a widely adopted strategy to mitigate overproduction in the manufacturing industry, yet recent research reveals a counter-intuitive paradox: while it reduces waste from unsold finished goods, it may incentivize firms to…
In the era of a growing population, systemic changes to the world, and the rising risk of crises, humanity has been facing an unprecedented challenge of resource scarcity. Confronting and addressing the issues concerning the scarce…
A Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System is a robotised parts-to-picker system that is particularly well-suited for e-commerce warehousing. One distinguishing feature of this type of warehouse is its high storage modularity. Numerous robots are…
We propose a nonlinear optimization model for determining the optimum lot size and reorder point for a food item distributed through a cold warehouse as well as the optimum quality features, namely temperature, humidity, packaging type, and…
We consider a three-level food chain in which an epidemics affects the intermediate population. Two models are presented, respectively either allowing for unlimited food supply for the bottom prey, or instead assuming for it a logistic…
We study a resource allocation problem over time, where a finite (random) resource needs to be distributed among a set of users at each time instant. Shortfalls in the resource allocated result in user dissatisfaction, which we model as an…
Quantifying post-consumer food waste in institutional dining settings is essential for supporting data-driven sustainability strategies. This study presents a cost-effective computer vision framework that estimates plate-level food waste by…
We developed a common algorithmic solution addressing the problem of resource-constrained outreach encountered by social change organizations with different missions and operations: Breaking Ground -- an organization that helps individuals…
We study the cyclic inventory routing problem that involves joint decisions on vehicle routing and inventory replenishment on an infinite, cyclic horizon. It considers a single warehouse and a set of geographically dispersed retailers. We…
A principle of evolutionary adaptation is applied to the Lotka--Volterra models, in particular to the food webs. We present a relatively simple computational algorithm of optimization with respect to a given criterion. This algorithm boils…
This paper proposes a novel method for analyzing food retail processes with a focus on reducing food waste. The approach integrates object-centric process mining (OCPM) with stochastic process discovery and analysis. First, a stochastic…
How do we allocate scarcere sources? How do we fairly allocate costs? These are two pressing challenges facing society today. I discuss two recent projects at NICTA concerning resource and cost allocation. In the first, we have been working…