Queueing models for police-fire merger analysis

Cities with under 100,000 in population expend a significant portion of their budgets on emergency services. One option that a number of these cities have considered for improving service and cutting costs is training personnel to handle both police and fire roles. In this paper we describe a hierarchy of models that we have used to assess the performance viability of a merger as well as to design specific deployment plans. The modeling environment is more complex than a traditional police or fire system. We need to model the response pattern of four or more patrol units along with the simultaneous dispatch of fire equipment from one or more fire stations. The major contribution of the paper is the manner in which a series of models is linked together to forecast a wide range of performance measures under differing dispatch assumptions. We use a queueing model of police patrol to calculate steady state probabilities and expected delays without preemption. We then model two types of preemptive dispatch strategies utilized in responding initially to a major fire by superimposing a binomial distribution on the basic queueing model. There is also a travel time simulation model to calculate conditional expected response time statistics. The queueing models and the travel time simulation are then combined to estimate unconditional expected values. Lastly, we describe a simulation model used to address transient performance issues that are of concern during a major fire.     

Queueing analysis of a discrete closed-loop conveyor with service facilities

We consider a discrete closed-loop conveyor system consisting of a loading station, an unloading station, and a number of carriers which move with constant speed along a closed track. At the loading station units arrive in batches while the arrival of batches is governed by a Poisson process. The units queue at the loading station and await there the arrival of an empty carrier. Each unit requires some amount of service which is provided while the unit is on a carrier. After completion of service a unit leaves the system as soon as it reaches the unloading station. Our interest focuses on the steady-state queue length at the loading station. We obtain explicit results for the case where units leave their carriers on passing the unloading station for the second time. We were motivated to study this case by a slotted ring protocol for local area networks.     

List coloring with requests

Let be a graph with a list assignment . Suppose a preferred color is given for some of the vertices; how many of these preferences can be respected when -coloring ? We explore several natural questions arising in this context, and propose directions for further research.     

Rejoinder on: Queueing models for the analysis of communication systems

In this rejoinder, we respond to the comments and questions of three discussants of our paper on queueing models for the analysis of communication systems. Our responses are structured around two main topics: discrete-time modeling and further extensions of the presented queueing analysis.     

Comments on: Queueing models for the analysis of communication systems

The paper under discussion is a well-written exposition on the performance modeling of communication systems by discrete-time queueing systems, and their analysis. It basically consists of two parts: a review of the literature, focusing on the modelling of information streams and on scheduling disciplines (Sects. 2, 3), and a demonstration of some key methods for the analysis of discrete-time queueing systems, focusing on a particular two-class discrete-time queue with correlated arrivals and two priority classes (Sects. 4–6). In Sect. 1 of the present note, we make some introductory comments. In Sect. 2, realizing that the literature review in Bruneel et al. (TOP, 2014) is authoritative and extensive, we focus on a few adjacent topics which fall outside the scope of Bruneel et al. (TOP, 2014) but which in our view may also be of some interest. Finally, in Sect. 3, we discuss the analysis in Sects. 4–6 of Bruneel et al. (TOP, 2014).     

Queueing models for the analysis of communication systems

Queueing models can be used to model and analyze the performance of various subsystems in telecommunication networks; for instance, to estimate the packet loss and packet delay in network routers. Since time is usually synchronized, discrete-time models come natural. We start this paper with a review of suitable discrete-time queueing models for communication systems. We pay special attention to two important characteristics of communication systems. First, traffic usually arrives in bursts, making the classic modeling of the arrival streams by Poisson processes inadequate and requiring the use of more advanced correlated arrival models. Second, different applications have different quality-of-service requirements (packet loss, packet delay, jitter, etc.). Consequently, the common first-come-first-served (FCFS) scheduling is not satisfactory and more elaborate scheduling disciplines are required. Both properties make common memoryless queueing models (M/M/1-type models) inadequate. After the review, we therefore concentrate on a discrete-time queueing analysis with two traffic classes, heterogeneous train arrivals and a priority scheduling discipline, as an example analysis where both time correlation and heterogeneity in the arrival process as well as non-FCFS scheduling are taken into account. Focus is on delay performance measures, such as the mean delay experienced by both types of packets and probability tails of these delays.     

Probabilistic analysis of redundant systems with human errors and common-cause failures

This paper presents two mathematical models representing three unit redundant systems with common cause failures and human errors. Reliability, steady state availability, mean time to failure (MTTF) and variance of time to failure formulas are developed for both models. Supplementary variables and Markov techniques were employed to obtain the resulting expressions. Reliability, availability, failure probability and MTTF plots are .shown     

Queueing analysis of a mobile trunked system with mixed traffic and finite population

In trunk mobile systems, telephone lines are interfaced with the radio system at the repeaters which serve dispatch type mobile subscribers and telephone line users. We study a trunked mobile system which serves two different types of communication traffic (i) dispatch traffic which has short average service time and (ii) interconnect traffic of telephone line users. Both types of users are assumed to arrive from finite population. The dispatch users are allowed to access all repeaters while interconnect users can occupy only a fixed number of repeaters. A sharing service algorithm to derive blocking probabilities of dispatch and interconnect users and average dispatch delay is proposed.     

Queueing Models with Multiple Waiting Lines

This paper discusses analytic solution methods for queueing models with multiple waiting lines. The methods are briefly illustrated, using key models like the 2×2 switch, the shortest queue and the cyclic polling system.     

带有故障的休假排队模型

研究了一个复合的休假排队模型,工作或休假时服务台都有可能故障,服务台一旦修好可立即进行服务,而且每个忙期结束就开始一次休假,顾客到达服从Poisson过程,到达率依赖于系统状态,修理时间、服务时间和休假长度都服从指数分布.给出了系统状态的平衡方程,利用概率母函数求出队长,并做了数值分析.     

Large Tandem Queueing Networks with Blocking

Systems consisting of many queues in series have been considered by Glynn and Whitt (1991) and Baccelli, Borovkov and Mairesse (2000). We extend their results to apply to situations where the queues have finite capacity and so various types of blocking can occur. The models correspond to max-plus type recursions, of simple form but in infinitely many dimensions; they are related to percolation problems of finding paths of maximum weight through a 2-dimensional lattice with random weights at the vertices. Topics treated include: laws of large numbers for the speed of customers progressing through the system; stationary behaviour for systems with external arrival processes; a functional central limit theorem describing the behaviour of the front of the wave progressing through a system which starts empty; stochastic orderings for waiting times of customers at successive queues. Several open problems are noted.     

Reliability analysis of a three unit warm standby redundant system with repair

Two-unit warm standby redundant systems have been investigated extensively in the past. The most general model is the one in which both the lifetime and repair time distributions of the units are arbitrary. However the study of standby systems with more than two units, though very important, has received much less attention, possibly because of the built-in difficulties in analyzing them. Such systems have been studied only when either the lifetime or the repair time is exponentially distributed. When both these distributions are general, the problem appears to be intractable even in the case of cold standby systems. The present contribution is an improvement in the state of art in the sense that a three unit warm standby system is shown to be capable of comprehensive analysis. In particular we show that there are imbedded renewal points that render the analysis possible. Using these imbedded renewal points we obtain the reliability and availability functions. Emeritus Deceased 23rd December 2003.     

Nonlinear programming via an exact penalty function: Asymptotic analysis

In this paper we consider the final stage of a ‘global’ method to solve the nonlinear programming problem. We prove 2-step superlinear convergence. In the process of analyzing this asymptotic behavior, we compare our method (theoretically) to the popular successive quadratic programming approach.