Analysis Of Public Systems

Models for Public Systems Analysis

Models for Public Systems Analysis considers the mathematical model formulation to improve the delivery of urban service systems, such as sanitation, fire, police, and ambulances. This book is composed of five chapters that demonstrate the translation of significant societal problems into a mathematical framework, as well as the advantages and limitations of these models. Chapter 1 deals with the issue of plant location and siting questions, with a brief overview of water resource modeling, while Chapter 2 provides set-covering models for manpower scheduling as a direct outgrowth of the author's experience with the Sanitation Department in New York City. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the delivery of emergency services, particularly with models of congestion and delay and of optimal deployment. These chapters also present probabilistic analysis in nature since both the spatial and the temporal patterns of demand are intrinsically uncertain. The tools used are queueing theory and geometric probability. Chapter 5 examines network optimization methods, mainly to explore questions of vehicle routing and scheduling. This chapter also provides a few comments on large-scale models of urban growth, these being generally more familiar to the regional planner then to the operations analyst. This book will prove useful to applied mathematics and policy science students.

Systems Analysis in Public Policy

Public Systems Modeling

This is an open access book discusses readers to various methods of modeling plans and policies that address public sector issues and problems. Written for public policy and social sciences students at the upper undergraduate and graduate level, as well as public sector decision-makers, it demonstrates and compares the development and use of various deterministic and probabilistic optimization and simulation modeling methods for analyzing planning and management issues. These modeling tools offer a means of identifying and evaluating alternative plans and policies based on their physical, economic, environmental, and social impacts. Learning how to develop and use the mathematical modeling tools introduced in this book will give students useful skills when in positions of having to make informed public policy recommendations or decisions.