Operational Research for Emergency Planning in Healthcare: Volume 2 (OR Essentials)

This book presents a selection of studies that have applied Operational Research methods to improve emergency planning in healthcare, to include both A&E and public health emergencies like epidemic and natural disasters. The studies have delved into qualitative Operational Research like Problem Structuring, Critical Systems Thinking, Soft Systems Methodology, and Qualitative System Dynamics, and also quantitative techniques such as Monte Carlo Simulation, Discrete-event Simulation, and System Dynamics. These techniques have been applied for review and assessment of emergency services, for policy formulation and for facilitating broader public engagement in emergency preparedness and response. Furthermore, this book presents rigorous reviews on the applications of Operational Research in the wider healthcare context. This volume focuses mainly on emergency planning at the strategic level, whereas volume 1 focuses on planning at the operational level. The OR Essentials series presents a unique cross-section of high quality research work fundamental to understanding contemporary issues and research across a range of Operational Research (OR) topics. It brings together some of the best research papers from the highly respected journals of the Operational Research Society, also published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Navonil Mustafee is Senior Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Exeter Business School. He has published several peer-reviewed articles on healthcare modelling and simulation and has worked with the NHS in Wales and England on a number of capacity management studies which have used Operations Research techniques. Currently, he is engaged in collaborative studies with the Horizon Institute at Torbay Hospital. More widely, his research interests include simulation methodology (e.g. hybrid simulation, mix of soft-hard OR), parallel and distributed simulation, and bibliometric analysis of research domains.

He has authored close to 100 peer-reviewed papers in journals, conferences and chapters in books, and has co-edited one conference proceedings (UKORS OR55 conference). He is Associate Editor for Simulation (the transactions of the Society for Modeling & Simulation International) and the Journal of Simulation (a publication of the UK OR society), and serves on the editorial board of several other journals. He has served as the program co-chair for the UK OR Society's 2013 annual conference (OR55) and program chair for the Spring Simulation Multi-conference 2014 (SpringSim14). He is conference vice-general chair for SpringSim15 and co-program chair for the 2015 ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS).