Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Our work this summer (still in progress) on Bilingual Call Centres has focused on bilingual call centre models that allocate bilingual agents on the basis of the difference in queue lengths. Upon completion of this step, we intend to study trilingual call centres to gain insight into good strategies for the optimal allocation of inflexible (unilingual) and partially-flexible (bilingual) agents, before using those who are trilingual. We then hope to apply insights gained from this aspect to allocation procedures for multilingual call centres. Turning to organ transplant waitlists, demand for organs from patients who could benefit exceeds the stable supply in almost all jurisdictions. For kidneys and livers, living-donor transplants are an option that is receiving increased attention to fill in the gap. Our work in this field has developed forecasts for the number of deceased donor organs vs. living donor organs required to achieve stability of the liver transplant queues in Canada. Future work will include a detailed simulation of waitlist operations, to more fully understand the impact of blood type, health level, time on list and other factors on time to transplantation. A theoretical priority queue model will be developed, to reflect increased urgency as a patient's health level decreases over time. Future work in the area of risk theory will pursue two fronts: applying fluid flow techniques to as yet unresolved aspects of perturbed risk processes such as the surplus prior to ruin, and initiating investigations of Gerber-Shiu functions for perturbed risk processes and those with a multi-layered structure. In Forestry, working with partners in provincial fire authorities (Ontario MNR) and national fire specialists (Canadian Forestry Service), we will study the fire spotting phenomenon, using infrared cameras, expert opinion elicitation, and other techniques.