Browsing by Author "Kara, Bahar"

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    Contributions to humanitarian logistics
    (Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2019) Batta, R.; Huang, S.; Kara, Bahar
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    Optimizing vaccine delivery with drones for hard-to-reach regions
    (I E E E Computer Society, 2024-01-06) Campbell, James F.; Kara, Bahar; Li, Haitao; Enayati, Shakiba; Peker, Meltem; Akenroye, Temi
    This research optimizes the use of drones, alongside other transport modes, for delivery of routine childhood vaccines subject to cold chain requirements. We focus on the value of drones to improve vaccine deliveries for hard-to-reach regions. This paper first briefly describes optimization of country-level vaccine distribution from national depots to local health zone distributions centers (DCs) using both large and small drones, along with boats, trucks and planes. Then we focus on research on optimizing local vaccine delivery within one health zone, from the DC to remote aid posts, using small drones, along with walking, boats and trucks. Results using data for the island nation of Vanuatu show that drones can be very useful for vaccine delivery to replace current transportation options, and to resupply health workers with fresh vaccines at remote sites to allow more efficient health worker outreach trips. © 2024 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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    Single machine total tardiness problem: exact and heuristic algorithms based on Beta-sequence and decomposition theorems
    (1994) Kara, Bahar
    The primary concern of this thesis is to analyze single machine total tardiness problem and to develop both an exact algorithm and a heuristic algorithm. The analysis of the literature reveals that exact algorithms are limited to 100 jobs. We enlarge this limit considerably by basing our algorithms on the ¡3- Sequence and decomposition theorems from the recent literature. With our algorithm, we exactly solve 200 job problems in low CPU time, and we also solved 120 out of 160 test problems with 500 jobs. In addition we develop a heuristic based on our exact algorithm which results in optimum solutions in 30% of test problems and stays with 9% of the optimal in all test runs.