TITLE:  Some new results in the continuous approximation theory of transportation

ABSTRACT:

One of the fundamental concerns in the analysis of logistical systems is the trade-off between localized, independent provision of goods and services versus provision along a centralized infrastructure such as a backbone network.  In this talk, we use the "continuous approximation paradigm" to study two instances of this trade-off:  in the first instance, we calculate the improvements in efficiency that arise when one uses unmanned aerial vehicles, or "drones", to deliver packages to customers, and in the second instance, we determine the social benefit that arises when cities introduce delivery services for groceries.

Bio:  John Gunnar Carlsson is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California.  He received a Ph.D. in computational mathematics from ICME in Stanford University in 2009 and an A.B. in mathematics and music from Harvard College in 2005.  He is the recipient of the 2013 INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) Prize, the 2014 Air Force Young Investigator Prize, the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the 2010 INFORMS Interactive Session Prize.  His research is supported by DARPA, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Transportation (MnDOT), and the Boeing Company, and has appeared in Operations Research,  Scientific Reports, Transportation Science, the INFORMS Journal on Computing, and the ACM Transactions on Algorithms.  He is an associate editor of Operations Research and Management Science.