Thesis Topic: Resource Management for Complex and Dynamic Environments


My research focuses on different aspects of managing resources in complex and dynamic processes such as the one used for providing patient care in an emergency department of a hospital or for developing large software systems. Processes like patient care in emergency departments need to deal with human resources like doctors, nurses, clerks as well as inanimate resources like beds, equipments and medical supplies. These resources are highly heterogeneous, almost always scarce and often constrained by intricate management policies that govern their usage.

We believe that high quality service or product can only be produced with effective processes and through continuous process improvement. It is our contention that these processes can be written with considerable value using appropriate languages. One can dynamically then look into the processes through simulation with the presence of constrained resources and identify defects or discover ways to improve them. Reasoning about resources becomes an important part of this approach. We have developed an executable process definition language with rigorous semantics called Little-JIL. Our experience has shown the usefulness of using the right language in capturing the coordination aspects of processes. However, there are many challenging issues regarding how to model and schedule the diverse type of resources in simulated processes such that we can reason about their effective utilization.

As part of my thesis work, I have been working on developing a resource modeling framework, a rich resource-request language, a constraint specification mechanism to capture management policies, and algorithms for effective resource allocation. My resource management prototype, ROMEO, is used to drive the simulation of processes specified in Little-JIL language. I have been working primarily with domain experts from the hospital emergency departments (ED). We are studying impact of changes in process and resource utilization in ED patient care service.



Publications:

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