Browsing by Author "Buluc, Elfe"

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Open Access
Covering vehicle routing problem: application for mobile child friendly spaces for refugees
(Springer, 2021-02) Buluc, Elfe; Peker, Meltem; Kara, Bahar Y.; Dora, M.
The world is facing a large-scale refugee crisis because of the ongoing war in Syria, and it is important to improve refugees’ life conditions from a humanitarian point of view. In order to analyse the living conditions of refugees, we conduct fieldwork in a district in Ankara, Turkey, and interview refugees, the local population and humanitarian practitioners from several organizations. Among the many challenges refugees face, we observe that addressing the problems of refugee children is critical. Thus, in this study, we focus on increasing the efficiency of the education services provided to refugee children. We investigate a service provided via mobile trucks that supply informal education and psychological support to children. By analysing the operational dynamics of these trucks, we introduce two problems to the logistics literature, which we refer to as the covering vehicle routing problem and the covering vehicle routing problem with integrated tours. In the first problem, we either visit or cover all nodes, such that every node not in one of the tours is within a predetermined distance of any visited node. In the second problem, we generate smaller tours for covered (or unvisited) nodes originated at the visited ones. We first propose mathematical models for the problems and then introduce heuristic methods to overcome the computational challenge of the second problem. In the computational study, we compare the optimal solutions obtained using the models with a solution of real-life application. We then test the models and heuristics on medium and large real data sets gathered from Turkey and conduct sensitivity analysis on the model parameters.
Open Access
No country for young refugees: barriers and opportunities for inclusive refugee education practices
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2024) Demir, Sebnem Manolya; Sahinyazan, Feyza G.; Kara, Bahar Yetiş; Buluc, Elfe
The recent refugee crises in Ukraine (2022) and Syria (2011) have created millions of refugees, 40% of whom are children. The education systems of countries hosting refugees struggle to integrate such large populations. In addition, language barriers and the stigma associated with refugees hamper inclusive and equitable education opportunities for these children. There is thus a risk of "lost generations" distanced from education, who may eventually depend on social security systems and monetary aid in the long term. This study considers the following research question: How can a host country improve the inclusion of refugee children in the education system without overburdening its infrastructure? First, we document the availability and accessibility challenges and opportunities that refugee children face during the Syrian refugee crisis. We then develop an inclusive planning strategy aligned with existing capacity and resources and formulate two adaptations of the maximum covering problem (MCP): cooperative capacitated MCP with heterogeneity constraints (CCMCP-HC) to improve the current schooling access in T & uuml;rkiye and Modular CCMCP-HC to guide early planning in the case of a future crisis. Our computational analyses illustrate that the proposed approach yields higher schooling rates and capacity utilization than existing approaches. Our results emphasize the importance of having a planning strategy in the initial phases of a crisis that considers future integration possibilities. This study analyzes T & uuml;rkiye's experience and lessons learned to provide a road map for other ongoing and future refugee crises.