Navonil Mustafee

• PhD Information Systems and Computing
• Professor at University of Exeter

This call for papers is for a joint special issue of the Journal of Simulation and Health Systems - the journals of the Operational Research (OR) Society. We invite authors to submit original research on the use of cross-disciplinary approaches with computer simulation. The work must extend the theory, methodology, application and/or practice of mo...

Perishable products are associated with a limited shelf-life, and their efficient management often requires close matching of supply with demand. Due to the inherent uncertainty in supply chains, determining stock reordering points and issuance policies is challenging. Tools and techniques from Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) support...

The healthcare sector contributes significantly to environmental impacts, mainly through consuming resources for patient care that generate waste and carbon footprint. For example, hospital pharmacy aseptic units, critical for preparing high-risk injectable medications, contribute to this impact through generating medicinal waste, personal protecti...

Planning for Emergency Response is crucial to a region’s preparedness for climate resilience. It involves multiple government sectors and necessitates effective cooperation between them. Collective management of emergency response resources can improve resource allocation at a regional scale and overcome local constraints. However, prioritising res...

The COVID-19 pandemic and higher levels of uncertainty due to climate change have emphasised the need for resilient and secure supply chains. This is also true for Human Milk Banks (HMBs), which are responsible for providing screened and safe Donor Human Milk (DHM) to neonatal hospital infants. Given the perishable nature of human milk, current UK...

Within the field of water engineering, digital twins represent an exciting new technology that offers opportunities within both simulation and visualisation to create applications that allow non-expert users (in water engineering) to visualise and hypothesise potential scenarios based on real-world situations allowing for both short-term tactical a...

This tutorial aims to support modellers working in healthcare research or practice to build Discrete-Event Simulation models using the Free and Open Source Software SimPy and Python. We provide a step-by-step guide to building a stylised urgent care telephone call centre model. Open materials that accompany the tutorial, including models and exerci...

Abstraction or substitution and aggregation are the most widely used simulation model simplification operations. Abstraction involves replacing subsystems within a discrete-event simulation (DES) with one or more quantities - typically random variables - representing the lengths of stay in the subsystems(s) in question to create a `simplified' syst...

Industrial Symbiosis (InSym) leverages the proximity of entities to gain a competitive advantage through collective strategies. Within the circular economy, this involves the circular exchange and reuse of water, energy, and resources among participating businesses, enhancing resource valorisation in the manufacturing process. However, InSym, as a...

This paper presents the design of a web-based decision co-creation platform to showcase water treatment technologies connected via industrial symbiosis for a circular economy approach. The platform is developed as part of the EU H2020-funded ULTIMATE project. This system initially investigates three case studies focusing respectively on: water and...

Reproducibility of computational research is critical for ensuring transparency, reliability and reusability. Challenges with computational reproducibility have been documented in several fields, but healthcare discrete-event simulation (DES) models have not been thoroughly examined in this context. This study assessed the computational reproducibi...

Over recent decades, workplace bullying and other forms of ‘negative acts’ have become a phenomenon of global interest. Extant scholarship has recognized the negative effects, which escalating acts of verbal and physical aggression can have on individuals and the wider, ethical infrastructure of organisations. While previous studies have explored t...

The modelling and simulation (M&S) literature identifies two forms of hybrid studies—hybrid simulation (HS) and hybrid model (HM). While HS is the combined application of simulation techniques such as discrete-event simulation, agent-based simulation and system dynamics, HM has a cross-disciplinary focus; the objective is to apply research paradigm...

The implementation challenges for modelling and simulation in health and social care are well-known and understood. Yet increasing availability of data and a better understanding of the value of Operational Research (OR) applications are strengthening opportunities to support healthcare delivery. Participative approaches in healthcare modelling hav...

The different types of experimentation and reasons why to use simulation experiments in the various application domains are the topic of this chapter of the SCS M&S Body of Knowledge. It addresses the types of simulation techniques, introduces the simulation of discrete systems using DEVS in detail, and also comprises a section on continuous system...

Understanding the Circular Economy for water is challenging. It requires being acquainted with the individual components involved in the urban water cycle such as stormwater, water conveyance, groundwater, water drainage, wastewater treatment and discharge. In addition, to appreciate benefits and tradeoffs in the context of Circular Economy, one al...

The importance of inventory management has been widely acknowledged both in practice and in academic research, with perishable products constituting an additional complexity in the field. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is amongst the most frequently used Operations Research methods that allow the incorporation of stochasticity (reflective of the r...

The increase in demand for outpatient departments (OPDs) has contributed to overcrowded clinics and patient dissatisfaction. Computer simulation can help decision-makers meet the operational challenge of balancing the demand for outpatient services with considerations of available capacity. The paper presents a synthesis of the literature on simula...

Research into real-time simulation applications outside of manufacturing environments has extended to sociotechnical systems such as healthcare over the past decade, where a number of published studies have demonstrated proof-of-concept models for near-future resource planning. Using real-time decision-support systems, people take decisions support...

Aims The use of donor human milk (DHM) for preterm infants, where the mother’s milk is not available, has benefits such as protecting infants against the potentially fatal condition of necrotising enterocolitis, and when used optimally, supporting mothers to establish breastfeeding. Understanding the relationship between clinical choices for DHM pr...

We explore six small-medium enterprises (SMEs) across multiple sectors and their approach towards circular economy (CE) adoption. Our study explores the ‘how and why’ of CE adoption for SMEs, comparing opportunities and challenges around chosen tools and methods. A multi-methodological approach uses interviews, facilitated workshops and tool demons...

New technologies constantly change the paradigm of how businesses will be run in the future. The Internet of Things (IoT) enables new business opportunities for data-driven transformation in organisations. The emergence of the IoT concept has resulted in numerous definitions, with earlier references primarily focussed on the technological aspects....

For strategic planning of healthcare services, understanding and accounting for future demand can support resource management. A hybrid modelling approach is well-placed to address these issues using demand projections with simulation for capacity planning. We present a methodology which conceptualises each stage as a collaborative activity in a st...

The sharing economy is a peer-to-peer economic model characterized by people and organizations sharing resources. With the emergence of such economies, an increasing number of logistics providers seek to collaborate and derive benefit from the resultant economic efficiencies, sustainable operations, and network resilience. This study investigates t...

The field of Supply Chain Management (SCM ) is experiencing rapid strides in the use of Industry 4.0 technologies and the conceptualization of new supply chain configurations for online retail, sustainable and green supply chains, and the Circular Economy. Thus, there is an increasing impetus to use simulation techniques such as discrete-event simu...

This study demonstrates the implementation of the stochastic ruler discrete simulation optimization method for calibrating an agent-based model (ABM) developed to simulate hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission. The ABM simulates HCV transmission between agents interacting in multiple environments relevant for HCV transmission in the Indian context....

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed severe demands on healthcare facilities across the world, and in several countries, makeshift COVID-19 centres have been operationalised to handle patient overflow. In developing countries such as India, the public healthcare system (PHS) is organised as a hierarchical network with patient flows from lower-tier prim...

p>Hybrid Simulation (HS) is the application of two or more simulation techniques (e.g., ABS, DES, SD) in a single MS study. Distinct from HS, Hybrid Modelling (HM) is defined as the combined application of simulation approaches (including HS) with methods and techniques from the broader OR/MS literature and also across disciplines. In this paper, w...

Modelling and simulation (M&S) techniques are frequently used in Operations Research (OR) to aid decision-making. With growing complexity of systems to be modelled, an increasing number of studies now apply multiple M&S techniques or hybrid simulation (HS) to represent the underlying system of interest. A parallel but related theme of research is e...

The purpose of a modelling and simulation (M&S) study for real-world operations management applications is to support decision-making and inform potential action, therefore investigating the aspects of the modelling process which influence trust is important. Previous work has considered the question of trust through the lens of model validation. H...

The acknowledgement of a research tradition by other disciplines shows its contribution to the development of the broader body of scientific knowledge. This paper investigates the contribution of IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) research to broader research disciplines by analyzing how researchers within and beyond IMP have cited core IMP...

Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) has traditionally been defined as the discipline that applies advanced analytical methods to help make better and more informed decisions. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the existing knowledge base of OR/MS research and practice using a proposed keywords-based approach. A concep...

Objective This study aimed to develop a risk prediction model identifying general practices at risk of workforce supply–demand imbalance. Design This is a secondary analysis of routine data on general practice workforce, patient experience and registered populations (2012 to 2016), combined with a census of general practitioners’ (GPs’) career int...

Advances in computer networking, storage technologies, and high‐performance computing are helping global communities of researchers to address increasingly ambitious problems in Science collaboratively. E‐Science is the “science of this age”; it is realized through collaborative scientific enquiry which requires the utilization of non‐trivial amoun...

Maintenance of offshore wind turbines is a complex and costly undertaking which acts as a barrier to the development of this source of energy. Factors such as the size of the turbines, the size of the wind farms, their distance from the coast and meteorological conditions make it difficult for the stakeholders to select the optimal maintenance stra...

Fixed pricing for healthcare services is emerging as an attractive business model for private healthcare service providers. Under fixed pricing (or flat rate) contract, the patient is charged a fixed price for the healthcare services irrespective of the actual cost incurred by the hospital. Such contracts increase the risks for the healthcare servi...

In this paper, a Casualty Collection Points (CCPs) location problem is formulated as a two-stage robust stochastic optimization model in an uncertain environment. In this modelling approach, the network de- sign decisions are integrated with the multi-period response operational decisions where the number of casualties with different levels of inju...

In this paper, a Casualty Collection Points (CCPs) location problem is formulated as a two-stage robust stochastic optimization model in an uncertain environment. In this modelling approach, the network design decisions are integrated with the multi-period response operational decisions where the number of casualties with different levels of injuri...

This work in progress is an application of a hybrid modelling (HM) approach for short-term decision support in urgent and emergency healthcare. It uses seasonal ARIMA time-series forecasting to predict emergency department (ED) overcrowding in a near-future moving window (1-4 hours) using data downloaded from a digital platform (NHSquicker). NHSqui...

Simulation approaches have long been used in the context of supply-chain management (SCM). Unlike the conventional approach which models the different stages of SC as a single simulation, a distributed supply-chain simulation (DSCS) enables coordinated execution of existing models through use of distributed simulation middleware. The new era of Ind...

Industry 4.0 proposes the use of digital and connected manufacturing technologies for enhanced value creation. The measures that are traditionally associated with value creation include the reduction in waste, increased productivity and efficiency improved profitability, etc. With a growing interest in sustainability, it is important to supplement...

The Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC) is part of the Summer Simulation Multi-conference that is organized by the Society of Modelling and Simulation International. SCSC celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2018! We therefore thought it timely to present a profiling study of SCSC conferences and report on metrics associated with publication...

Background UK general practice faces a workforce crisis, with general practitioner (GP) shortages, organisational change, substantial pressures across the whole health-care system and an ageing population with increasingly complex health needs. GPs require lengthy training, so retaining the existing workforce is urgent and important. Objectives (1...

This book is based on the “Summer Simulation Multi-Conference” (SCSC), which has been a prominent platform for the dissemination of scholarly research in the M&S community for the last 50 years. In keeping with the conference’s seasonal title, the authors have called this half-century “the summer of simulation,” and it has led not only to simulatio...

p>The last 10 years have witnessed a marked upsurge of attention on Hybrid Simulation (HS). The majority of authors define HS as a joint modelling approach which includes two or more simulation approaches (mainly Discrete Event Simulation, System Dynamics and Agent Based Simulation). Whilst some may argue that HS has been in existence for more than...

Hybrid simulation (defined as a modelling approach that combines two or more of the following methods: discrete-event simulation, system dynamics, and agent-based simulation) has experienced near-exponential growth in popularity in the past two decades. However, a large proportion of the academic literature on hybrid simulation is found in computer...

Current approaches to risk management stress the need for dynamic approaches to risk identification aimed at reducing the expected consequences of undesired outcomes. We contend that these approaches place insufficient emphasis on the system knowledge available to the assessor, particularly in respect of three related factors, namely the dynamic be...

The ‘Advances in the State of the Art of Modeling and Simulation’ special issue is in two parts. The first part covers the subject of hybrid systems modeling.1–3. It comprises five papers published in the preceding issue of the journal.4–8 This part includes two additional papers employing discrete event system specification (DEVS) formalism. An ov...

The ‘Advances in the State of the Art of Modeling and Simulation’ special issue is in two parts. The first part comprises five papers on hybrid systems modeling,1–3 which is the combined application of modeling and simulation with methods and techniques from disciplines such as computer science/applied computing, business analytics, data science, o...

Rationale, aims, and objectives: As the Sustainable Development Goals are rolled out worldwide, development leaders will be looking to the experiences of the past to improve implementation in the future. Systems thinking and complexity science (ST/CS) propose that health and the health system are composed of dynamic actors constantly evolving in r...

Current approaches to risk management place insufficient emphasis on the system knowledge available to the assessor, particularly in respect of the dynamic behavior of the system under threat, the role of human agents (HAs), and the knowledge available to those agents. In this article, we address the second of these issues. We are concerned with a...

All the papers of the conference are available at https://informs-sim.org/wsc17papers/at_a_glance.html

The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation (JDMS) publishes peer-reviewed articles in modeling and simulation (M&S) in the application area of military and defense. We profile literature published in JDMS from 2012 to 2016. Over 150 contributed and special issue papers appeared in a total of 20 issues of the journal during this period. Our anal...

In the era of big data, data science and data analytics, it is logical to address the impact of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) by treating the papers (and metadata associated with publications) as raw data. This data then serves as a treasure trove from which to answer questions and pose new ones about modelling and simulation as a field to...

This chapter takes an empirical approach to examine to what extent federal research resources allocated to National Sciences Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are used to fund projects that use modeling and simulation (M&S) as a method, technique, or tool. It performs content analysis on three sets of abstracts from funded NS...

A simulation study consists of several stages: problem formulation, model implementation, verification and validation, experimentation and output data analysis. The application of multiple techniques in the model implementation stage is referred to as hybrid simulation, which we distinguish in this paper from a hybrid M&S study, the latter referrin...