NetwORks and policies: OR to the rescue
本文基于2024年Blackett讲座，概述运筹学如何帮助理解从城市交通到各类供应链的网络系统，并为经济和社会效益的政策制定提供工具。
Operational Research (OR), as a discipline, and with its historical foundations grounded in addressing immense challenges associated with WWII, is uniquely positioned to address many of the greatest problems facing the world today from climate change to increasing strife and wars. In this paper, based on my 2024 Blackett Lecture, I overview how our understanding of network systems from congested urban transportation networks to a variety of supply chains, from agri-food ones to blood supply chains, has benefited from OR, and how OR has provided tools for the rigorous construction and evaluation of associated policies for economic and societal benefit. One of the greatest strengths of the OR discipline is the recognition of the importance of a multidisciplinary perspective and the solving of problems through teams. Working together, and engaging in public outreach, we can continue the remarkable, creative legacies of those who have come before us, through mathematical modeling, analysis, algorithm development, the solution of critical network problems, and implementation in practice.