Solved: Emergency Facilities Readiness Project

Overview and Rationale

This project is designed to provide you with hands-on experiences in performing simulation techniques – a method that students learn to use for decision-making purposes. You are asked to use simulation to evaluate the readiness and competency of a local emergency facilities.

Course Outcomes

This assignment is directly linked to the following key learning outcomes from the course syllabus:

CO1:  Use descriptive, Heuristic and prescriptive analysis to drive business strategies and actions

CO3: Analyze the role of analytics in supporting decision making for various other stakeholder groups within and outside of your organization

Assignment Summary

University administers at a local University have recently launched several planning projects to determine how effectively local emergency facilities such as local hospitals can handle natural disasters (weather, fire,…). One of these projects focused on the transport of disaster victims from the campus to the five major hospitals in the area 1:

(i)  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

(ii)  Tufts Medical Center

(iii)  Massachusetts General Hospital

(iv)  Boston Medical Center

(v)  Brig h am an d Wo men ’ s Hos p ital

The project team would like to determine how many victims each hospital might expect in a disaster, and how long it would take to transport victims to th e hospitals. However, because of lack of historical data on disasters in the area, the project team have decided to

assume that the total number of victims is best approximated by a triangular probability distribution with a minimum and a maximum of respectively 20 and 300 victims, and with a peak of 80 victims.

The emergency facilities and capabilities at the five hospitals vary. The following table describes how victims will be distributed to the hospitals in the event of a disaster

situation:

The proximity of the hospitals to the university campus also varies. It is estimated that the transport times to each of the hospitals is exponentially distributed with a certain average that depends on that hospital. The following table indicates the average of the transport

time for each hospital.

For simplicity, we may assume that each hospital has two emergency vehicles, so that one leaves the university campus when the other one leaves the hospital. This means that one emergency vehicle arrives at the campus when the other arrives at the hospital. Therefore,

the total transport time for each hospital will be the sum of transporting each victim to that hospital.

Project Instructions:

1.   Perform a simulation analysis consisting of 5,000 simulations to determine:

a.   Average number of victims that can be expected at each hospital.

b.   For each hospital, the average total time (in hours) needed to transport all victims.

c.   For part (a) above, create a chart the displays the Law of Large Numbers in

action for the Beth Israel Medical. (Law of large numbers: As the number of trials becomes larger, the observed averages approach to the theoretical average.)

d.   For the Beth Israel Medical hospital, perform an exploratory data analysis of the total transport time by calculating a 95% confidence interval for the total transport time,

e. Let ? denote the average transport time (in minutes) per victim for the entire

process of transporting all victims. Perform an exploratory data analysis of ?.

What is the distribution looks like?

2.   Perform a simulation analysis consisting of 5,000 simulations in another worksheet of your workbook; however, assume that the total number of victims is normally distributed with a mean of 150 victims and a standard deviation of 50 victims. Furthermore, suppose that the transport time for each hospital is normally distributed with a mean and a standard deviation that differ for each hospital. The table below displays these quantities:

Analyze the results of this simulation by repeating parts (a) – (e) of part 1 using the above values.

3.   In the word document, explain your methodologies and conclusions.

4.   In the word document, provide your opinion regarding a few major quantitative and qualitative differences between the outputs of simulations (1) and (2) above.

5.   In the word document, explain how the information obtained from your simulation can be used for planning purposes.

6.   In the word document, explain in your opinion, how each simulation can be changed to provide additional useful information.

Format & Guidelines

Complete Parts 1, and 2 of the Project Instructions above. Each part must be in a different file.

Complete Parts 3, 4, 5 and 6 as part in your report. The report should follow the following format:

(i)   Introduction

(ii)  Analysis

(iii) Conclusion

And be a minimum of 1000 words and be presented in the APA format.

Reference:

1.   University Health and Counselling Services. Northeastern University. Emergencies.

Retrieved from: https://www.northeastern.edu/uhcs/medical-services/emergencies/

2.    Taylor III, B.W. (2011) Introduction to Management Sciences. Prentice Hall. Upper

Saddle River, NJ