Harold Larnder Prize

Omond Solandt Award

Award of Merit

Service Awards

Practice Prize Competition

Practice Prize Competition

Description

Each year the Canadian Operational Research Society conducts a competition on the practice of operational research to recognize the challenging application of the OR approach to the solution of applied problems. The main criteria considered in evaluating submissions are project impact on the client organization, contribution to the practice of O.R., quality of analysis, degree of challenge and quality of written and oral presentation.

There are two basic purposes behind the Competition, the first being the obvious one of recognizing outstanding O.R. practice. The other is to focus attention on O.R. and its applications by practitioners from Canada by attracting quality papers to the CORS National Conference.

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Burcin Bozkaya, Sabanci University, Turkey, Erhan Erkut, Ozyegin University, Turkey, Dan Haight, University of Alberta, Canada, Gilbert Laporte, HEC Montréal, Canada

Every few years, the City of Edmonton must review and possibly change its electoral district boundaries. The most recent review process was completed in 2009 and resulted in a modification of the district plan from a six-ward system with two council members in each to a single-member 12-ward system. The redistricting plan that we designed was formally approved as a city bylaw in July 2009 and will be in effect in the upcoming municipal elections of 2010.

At the time this study was undertaken, Edmonton was the only city in North America not to have a single-member district plan. A survey indicated that 54% of Edmontonians preferred single-member districts and 28% supported the existing dual councillor wards. Understandably, several councillors also preferred the status quo. Our mandate consisted of designing 12 single-councilor districts while respecting several criteria, some of which are legislated as bylaws: 1) the ward population and elector counts should lie within 25% of the average; 2) population growth should be taken into account so that the wards can last for at least three municipal elections; 3) community league boundaries, which reflect the borders and concerns of Edmonton neighbourhoods, should be respected, and communities with common interests should be kept within the same wards; 4) the districts should be compact and contiguous; 5) as few changes as possible should be made to the existing wards.

The problem was solved by means of a multi-criteria tabu search heuristic. The input to the algorithm is a set of basic units for which geographical and socio-economic information is available. The algorithm constructs initial districts and gradually modifies them by moving a peripheral unit to an adjacent district or by swapping two peripheral units between two adjacent districts. At the end of the process, some of the best solutions encountered are combined to create better ones. The algorithm was embedded within DistrictBuilder, an interactive GIS-based decision support framework. The system allows the user to choose options from menus, to adjust the weight of each term of the multi-objective function and even to change some parameters of the algorithm. The districts produced can be visualized and can easily be modified by forcing some assignments of basic units to districts.

We were able to produce very high quality solutions with respect to each criterion. The entire process, including meetings with city officials, proposing solutions, making manual modifications, preparing the final report with maps, graphics, etc. took barely a week. This would not have been possible with a traditional manual system. The fact that DistrictBuilder can handle several criteria simultaneously and allows interactions with the decision makers was instrumental in gaining acceptance of our proposed solution.

John Blake (r) congratulating Gilbert Laporte (l) and Burcin Bozkaya,
winners of the 2010 CORS Practice Prize. Absent: Erhan Erkut, Dan Haight

Previous Recipients

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2010

First Prize

Burcin Bozkaya, Erhan Erkut, Dan Haight, Gilbert Laporte, "Designing New Electoral Districts for the City of Edmonton"

Second Prize

Kent J. Kostuk, Keith A. Willoughby, "A Decision Support System for scheduling a professional sports league"

2009

First Prize

Andrea Cameron, Corinne MacDonald Eldon Gunn, "Improving Production and Inventory Planning for Scotsburn Ice Cream"

Second Prize

Sonya Vanderby, Michael W. Carter, Christopher Feindel, Timothy Latham, "Modelling the Future of the Canadian Cardiac Surgery Workforce Using Systems Dynamics"

2008

First Prize

Vincent S. Chow, Derek Atkins, Wenhai Huang, Martin L. Puterman, Neda Salehirad, "Reducing Surgical Ward Congestion at the Vancouver Island Health Authority through Improved Surgical Scheduling"

2007

First Prize

Mustapha Ouhimmou, Sophie D'Amours, Daoud Ait-kadi, Robert Beauregard, Satyaveer Singh Chauhan,"Optimization helps Shermag Gain Competitive Edge"

2006

First Prize

Saeed Zolfaghari, Vinh Quan, Ahmed El-Bouri, Banafsheh Namiranian, Maryam Khashayardoust, "Heuristics for large scale labour scheduling problems in retail sector"

Second Prize

Mehmet Aydinel, Ximena Cerda, Eric Cope, Mats Gerschman, Taraneh Sowlati, "Optimization of Production Allocation and Transshipment for a Leading Canadian Forest Products Company"

Third Prize (2)

Bao Nguyen, David Hopkin, Dr. Handson Yip, Dr. John Fawcett, "Concepts of Operations for the Side Scan Sonar Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Developed at DRDC Atlantic"

Eric Cope, Ian Fichtenbaum, Neda Salehirad, "Optimizing Cargo Heating Practices at Teekay Shipping Corporation"

2005

First Prize

Li Chen, Mats Gerschman, Fredrik Odegaard, David K. Puterman, Martin L. Puterman, Ryan Quee, "Improving the Efficiency of Porter Operations in Two Vancouver Hospitals"

2004

First Prize

Bernard Gendron, “Scheduling Employees in Quebec’s Liquor Stores with Integer Programming”

2003

First Prize

Derek Atkins, Mehmet A. Begen, Bailey Kluczny, Anita Parkinson, “Reducing Pre-Board Screening Queues at Vancouver International Airport”

Second Prize

Brunilde Sansò, Frédéric Bodevin, “Assessing User QoS in a Deployed GPRS Network”

2002

First Prize

Ernest Urbanovich, Ella E.Young, Martin L. Puterman, Sidney O. Fattedad, "Early Detection of High Risk Claims at the Worker's Compensation Board of British Columbia"

Second Prize

Marko Blais, Sophie D.Lapierre, Gilbert Laporte, "Solving a Home Care Districting Problem in an Urban Setting"

Third Prize

A. Ingolfsson, E. Erkut, S. Budge, "Simulation of a Single Start Station for Edmonton EMS"

2001

First Prize

Jean-Marie Bourjolly, Leslie Dejoie, Ke Ding, Oumar Dioume, Michel Lominy, "DOCAF (TM): A Commercial Software Package for Frequency Allocation in Cellular Phone Networks"

Second Prize

Erhan Erkut, Steve Kabanuk, Russ Fenske, Jerry Davis, "Improving the Emergency Service Delivery in St-Albert"

2000

Honourable Mention

Bao Nguyen, Dr Kevin Ng, "Modeling Canadian Search and Rescue Operations"

1999

Claude Berger, Fabien Chauny, André Langevin, Richard Loulou, Diane Riopel, Gilles Savard, Jean-Philippe Waaub, Agnès Wizere, "EUGÈNE : Un système d'aide à la décision pour la planification à long terme de la gestion intégrée des déchets domestiques"

1998

Erhan Erkut, Anthony Myroon, Kevin Strangway, "TransAlta redesigns its service delivery network"

1997

Paul Comeau, "DSS TANKER - A fuel management model for Air Transport Group"

1996

Michel Gamache, François Soumis, Daniel Villeneuve, Jacques Desrosiers, Éric Gélinas, "The preferential bidding problem at Air Canada"

1995

Maurice Elliott, "Optimizing gas production allocation"

1994

John Blake, Mike Carter, "An analysis of emergency room wait time issues via computer simulation"

1993

Michel Gamache, François Soumis, Gerald Marquis, Jacques Desrosiers, "A column generation approach for large scale aircrew rostering problems"

1992

Michael Carter, Gilbert Laporte, "A general examination scheduling system"

1991

Michael Scriabin, Jason Farlette, Dilip Kotak, Michael A. Matthews, "Air capacity planning symbiotic system (AIRSYM): Combining artificial and human intelligence"

1990

Jacques Ferland, Charles Fleurant, "Computer aided scheduling for a sport league"

1989

Eldon A. Gunn, Glenn Allen, John C. Campbell, Barclay Cunningham, Peter Rutherford, "One Year of OR: Models for Operational and Production planning in the Coal Industry"

1988

First Prize

Michael Carter, “A Lagrangian Relaxation Approach to the Classroom Assignment Problem”

Second Prize

Jacques A. Ferland and Gilles Guénette, “Decision Support System For the School Districting Problem”

1987

Not awarded

1986

Gilbert Laporte, "A System for Assigning Students to Course Sections at the École Polytechnique de Montréal"

1985

Not awarded

1984

A tie

Michel Goulet, "Système de Prévision des Déboursés"

Cary Swoveland, "Risk Analysis of Regulatory Options for the Transport of Dangerous Commodities by Rail"

1983

Iain R. Grunwell, "Simulation for Training Railway Yard General Yardmasters"

1982

Not awarded

Practice Prize Application Process

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Eligibility

Entries will be expected to report on a completed, practical application, and must describe results that had significant, verifiable and preferably quantifiable impact on the performance of the client organization.

Instructions

• Submit an abstract both by e-mail and in hardcopy, not exceeding 500 words of a paper on an actual success story of operational research by March 19, 2010 to:
  
  John Blake
  Department of Industrial Engineering
  Dalhousie University
  Halifax, NS B3J 2X4
  Phone: (902) 494-6068
  Fax: (902) 420-5878
  E-mail: john.blake@dal.ca
  
  The work on the project may have taken place over a period of several years, but at least some of the work must have taken place over the last two years. Previous publication of the work does not disqualify it; however, you may not report on a project which has been previously submitted to the CORS Competition on the Practice of O.R.
  
  
• Be a resident of Canada.
• Include a letter by an executive of the client organization that sponsored the application, attesting that this application truly had an impact and that the organization would not object to having a paper presented.
• Include the phone number of the author(s) and the name(s), title(s) and phone number(s) of at least one executive of the client organization where the O.R. application was put into effect.
• Finalists will be selected by April 9, 2010. They must submit a more detailed written report by April 30, 2010, which must not exceed 25 pages in the body and make an oral presentation of the paper at the CORS Annual Conference in Edmonton, AB, May 25-29, 2010. Finalists are required to prepare a one page project summary, suitable for publication in the CORS Bulletin and on the CORS website, detailing their project and its impact on the client organization.

Selection Criteria

• The project should exemplify the challenging application of the operational research approach to the solution of significant applied problems. While statistical and presentational difficulties are characteristics of almost all applications, they will not be considered a substitute for operational research.
• The quality of the analysis, of the modeling and of the successful implementation of the results at the client organization.
• The significance of the impact of the results and recommendations on the performance of the client organization.
• The presentation, both written and oral. A crucial part of the presentation is a "case history" of the project, which describes the project's development from start to finish, and focuses upon the challenges faced by the analysts.

Awards

A total of $1800 may be awarded by the committee: however, the committee reserves the right not to award any prize.