Becoming Visible: Why We Should be Better Communicators Now

Alice Raffaele ()
Additional contact information
Alice Raffaele: University of Trento

SN Operations Research Forum, 2021, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Abstract Several Operations Research (OR) applications have been presented at the $$4^{th}$$ 4 th AIROYoung Workshop in Bozen (February 5-7, 2020). We start this essay by reporting the main research topics studied and discussed nowadays by young OR researchers. Once again, these have shown the potential and the effect of exploiting applied mathematics, in particular OR, to solve problems arising from reality. Indeed, speaking about the present, OR has been already contributing to fight the COVID-19 pandemic from its beginning, integrated with other techniques to forecast and simulate future scenarios. For instance, OR can help decide how to optimally allocate resources and how to manage the supply chain of food, medical and essential items. We illustrate a few examples of the efforts done to tackle several aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given its strong impact and wide applicability, we wonder about the visibility problem of OR: why is it still unknown to people and has not become a buzzword such as the terms ”machine learning” or ”artificial intelligence”? And, still, what does it mean to ”become visible”? We compare some search terms with Google Trends and report several opinions on this topic. The main purpose of this essay is to refuel the discussion on OR communication to laypeople, by highlighting issues while considering different contexts. Starting from our young community itself, we would like to encourage researchers to take action to make OR more visible.

Keywords: AIROYoung; OR applications; COVID-19 outbreak; OR communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43069-020-00051-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:snopef:v:2:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s43069-020-00051-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43069

DOI: 10.1007/s43069-020-00051-y

Access Statistics for this article

SN Operations Research Forum is currently edited by Marco Lübbecke

More articles in SN Operations Research Forum from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().