Research Stories

by Carrie Barnett

Ajay Vinze and Raghu Santanam study how the principles of supply chain management might be applied to public health emergencies. In 2007, they collaborated with experts at the Decision Theater (DT), a high-tech visualization facility at Arizona State University. Using DT, the data is presented in a way that permits decision makers to better prepare for emergencies. They can play out "what if" scenarios in advance.

Vinze and Santanam are information systems professors at ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business. They plug numbers from a database into their simulation engine. Those numbers include stuff like area population, the number of hospital beds and doctors already in the area, or the time it takes to deliver vaccine from a central depot.

The results are also number sets. Some have ominous meaning: casualties, medical resources used, or predicted medical needs. Numbers are helpful. But complex problems are not always best understood by examining spreadsheet grids.

"Bottom line, we have a lot of data. We end up having to make sense of this data in a variety of ways, mainly from the perspective of policymakers," says Vinze.

The Decision Theater specializes in making data come alive. It was designed with the assumption that humans are visual creatures and that seeing is believing. The facility gave the researchers the extra dimension they sought. The centerpiece of the facility is a 260-degree faceted screen that can display panoramic computer graphics or video content.

"The better your conceptualization of the decision problem, then hopefully, the better the decisions that you make," says Santanam.

If the unthinkable happens and Vinze and Santanam's disease outbreak models are put to the test, the health officials will be ready. They will already have experienced the scenarios in the safe atmosphere of the Decision Theater.

Read more about Vinze and Santanam's research in "The ultimate supply chain test."