Operational Research: Methods and Applications

TL;DR

This comprehensive overview of Operational Research covers current methods, key developments, and diverse applications, serving as a reference for academics, researchers, students, and practitioners in the field.

Contribution

It provides an up-to-date, encyclopedic summary of OR methods and applications, highlighting recent advances and offering a broad reference resource.

Findings

Summarizes state-of-the-art OR methods

Lists diverse application areas of OR

Serves as a comprehensive reference

Abstract

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes.