Operational Research: methods and applications

Petropoulos, Fotios, Laporte, Gilbert, Aktas, Emel, Alumur, Sibel A., Archetti, Claudia, Ayhan, Hayriye, Battarra, Maria, Bennell, Julia A., Bourjolly, Jean-Marie, Boylan, John E., Breton, Michèle, Canca, David, Charlin, Laurent, Chen, Bo, Cicek, Cihan Tugrul, Cox, Louis Anthony, Currie, Christine S.M., Demeulemeester, Erik, Ding, Li, Disney, Stephen M., Ehrgott, Matthias, Eppler, Martin J., Erdoğan, Güneş, Fortz, Bernard, Franco, L. Alberto, Frische, Jens, Greco, Salvatore, Gregory, Amanda J., Hämäläinen, Raimo P., Herroelen, Willy, Hewitt, Mike, Holmström, Jan, Hooker, John N., Işık, Tuğçe, Johnes, Jill, Kara, Bahar Y., Karsu, Özlem, Kent, Katherine, Köhler, Charlotte, Kunc, Martin, Kuo, Yong-Hong, Letchford, Adam N., Leung, Janny, Li, Dong, Li, Haitao, Lienert, Judit, Ljubić, Ivana, Lodi, Andrea, Lozano, Sebastián, Lurkin, Virginie, Martello, Silvano, McHale, Ian G., Midgley, Gerald, Morecroft, John D.W., Mutha, Akshay, Oğuz, Ceyda, Petrovic, Sanja, Pferschy, Ulrich, Psaraftis, Harilaos N., Rose, Sam, Saarinen, Lauri, Salhi, Said, Song, Jing-Sheng, Sotiros, Dimitrios, Stecke, Kathryn E., Strauss, Arne K., Tarhan, İstenç, Thielen, Clemens, Toth, Paolo, Van Woensel, Tom, Berghe, Greet Vanden, Vasilakis, Christos, Vaze, Vikrant, Vigo, Daniele, Virtanen, Kai, Wang, Xun, Weron, Rafał, White, Leroy, Yearworth, Mike, Yıldırım, E. Alper, Zaccour, Georges and Zhao, Xuying (2024) Operational Research: methods and applications. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 75 (3). pp. 423-617. ISSN 0160-5682

Abstract

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first summarises the up-to-date knowledge and provides 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 and used as a point of reference by 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.