Papers by Xiaojun (Gene) Shan
Improving Homeland Security Decisions, 2017
Efficiency of 20 similar U.S. universities for master’s degree were evaluated using data envelopm... more Efficiency of 20 similar U.S. universities for master’s degree were evaluated using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The inputs for DEA are tuition fees, student to faculty ratio and number of research-only faculty while the outputs are graduation rate, freshman retention rate and number of publications. Then, AHP was applied to identify the best university. 64 participants participated in a survey to identify criteria. The five criteria are tuition fee, university global ranking, weather, scholarship and career opportunities. This study found Binghamton University as the most efficient university.
This paper briefly describes a new math modeling framework designed to improve understanding and ... more This paper briefly describes a new math modeling framework designed to improve understanding and design of policies to manage urban natural disaster risk. The framework represents four types of stakeholders (homeowners, primary insurers, reinsurers, and government); considers both insurance and retrofit as risk management strategies; and includes four mathematical models (homeowner decision-making, primary insurer decision-making, insurer competition; and loss estimation). A case study application for hurricane risk to residential buildings in North Carolina shows how the framework can be used to compare alternative policies, such as offering a retrofit subsidy or mandating insurance purchase. The 2010-2011 Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes highlight the need for future framework development to address losses associated with building damage as fully as possible, including not just direct repair costs, but indirect losses as well.
Incubators are used in the tissue culturing laboratories to maintain a stable environment for the... more Incubators are used in the tissue culturing laboratories to maintain a stable environment for the growth of cells, cultures and antibodies. It is considered to be an important tool in the technology development arena. Since incubators involve significant investment, it is important to select the best incubator for the purpose. The purpose of this study is to find the best incubator among the four Thermo Scientific CO2 Incubators, using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with five criteria. Each Incubator has its own range of precision to control the temperature suitable for tissue cell growth, humidity to maintain a stable environment, CO2 range to avoid the desiccation of the cells and the number of shelves, which signifies the storage volume available inside the incubator.
Journal of Industrial Engineering International, 2018
Anticoagulation clinics (ACCs) are specialty clinics that manage patients with blood clotting pro... more Anticoagulation clinics (ACCs) are specialty clinics that manage patients with blood clotting problems. Since labor costs usually account for a substantial portion of a healthcare organization's budget, optimizing the number and types of staff required was often the focus, especially for ACCs, where labor-intensive staff-patient interactions occur. A significant portion of tasks performed by clinical pharmacists might be completed by clinical pharmacist technicians, which are lessexpensive resources. While nurse staffing models for a hospital inpatient unit are well established, these models are not readily applicable to staffing ACCs. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a framework for determining the right staff mix of clinical pharmacists and clinical pharmacy technicians that increases the efficiency of care delivery process and improves the productivity of ACC staff. A framework is developed and applied to build a semi-automated fulltime equivalent (FTE) calculator and compare various staffing scenarios using a simulation model. The FTE calculator provides the right staff mix for a given staff utilization target. Data collected from the ACCs at VA Boston Healthcare System is used to illustrate the FTE calculator and the simulation model. The result of the simulation model can be used by ACC managers to easily determine the number of FTEs of clinical pharmacists and clinical pharmacy technicians required to reach the target utilization and the corresponding staffing cost.
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering, 2017
Insurance and retrofit are potentially effective but currently underutilized mechanisms to manage... more Insurance and retrofit are potentially effective but currently underutilized mechanisms to manage natural disaster risk. We use an empirical analysis of hurricane risk to residential buildings in North Carolina that includes a detailed, empirically-based representation of the building inventory, risk, insurance and retrofit strategies to examine voluntary choices between insuring, retrofitting, or doing nothing. Using an expected utility framework, we investigate how decisions change with changes in retrofit cost, risk-based insurance premiums, and risk attitudes. Individual loss distribution functions that are specific to location and structural characteristics influence the choice to insure and/or retrofit. We find that subsidizing retrofit has the potential to move the uninsured towards some form of risk reduction and is potentially cost effective. The analysis is novel in linking homeowner decisions regionally to detailed hurricane loss and retrofit modeling.
Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis, 2013
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in homeland security since September 11, 2001. Ma... more Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in homeland security since September 11, 2001. Many mathematical models have been developed to study strategic interactions between governments (defenders) and terrorists (attackers). However, few studies have considered the tradeoff between equity and efficiency in homeland security resource allocation. In this article, we fill this gap by developing a novel model in which a government allocates defensive resources among multiple potential targets, while reserving a portion of defensive resources (represented by the equity coefficient) for equal distribution (according to geographical areas, population, density, etc.). Such a way to model equity is one of many alternatives, but was directly inspired by homeland security resource allocation practice. The government is faced with a strategic terrorist (adaptive adversary) whose attack probabilities are endogenously determined in the model. We study the effect of the equity coefficient o...
Society is faced with a growing amount of property damage and casualties from man-made and natura... more Society is faced with a growing amount of property damage and casualties from man-made and natural disasters. Developing societal resilience to those disasters is critical but challenging. In particular, societal resilience is jointly determined by federal and local governments, private and non-profit sectors, and private citizens. We present a sequence of games among players such as federal, local, and foreign governments, private citizens, and adaptive adversaries. In particular, the governments and private citizens seek to protect lives, property, and critical infrastructure from both adaptive terrorists and non-adaptive natural disasters. The federal government can provide grants to local governments and foreign aid to foreign governments to protect against both natural and man-made disasters. All levels of government can provide pre-disaster preparation and post-disaster relief to private citizens. Private citizens can also make their own investments. The tradeoffs between protecting against man-made and natural disasters-specifically between preparedness and relief, efficiency and equity-and between private and public investment, will be discussed.
Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2014
Terrorism with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is an urgent threat to homeland security. The p... more Terrorism with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is an urgent threat to homeland security. The process of counter-WMD terrorism often involves multiple government and terrorist group players, which is under-studied in the literature. In this paper, first we consider two subgames: a proliferation game between two terrorist groups or cells (where one handling the black market for profits proliferates to the other one to attack, and this is modelled as a terrorism supply chain) and a subsidization game between two governments (where one potential WMD victim government subsidizes the other host government, who can interfere with terrorist activities). Then we integrate these two subgames to study how the victim government can use the strategy of subsidization to induce the host government to disrupt the terrorism supply chain. To our knowledge, this is the first game-theoretic study for modelling and optimally disrupting a terrorism supply chain in a complex four-player scenario. We find that in the integrated game, when proliferation payment is high or low, the practical terrorist group will proliferate and not proliferate, respectively, regardless of government decisions. In contrast, in the subsidization subgame between the two governments, the decision of subsidization depends on its cost. When proliferation payment is medium, the decision of subsidization depends on not only its cost but also the preparation cost and the attacking cost. Findings from our results would assist in government policymaking.
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Papers by Xiaojun (Gene) Shan