IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v24y1976i3p438-451.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On Searching for Events of Limited Duration

Author

Listed:
  • Arnold Barnett

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Abstract

Given a set of events, an observer wishes to detect as many of these as possible. The events arise at several discrete points according to independent Poisson processes, and the lifetimes of individual occurrences are independent and identically distributed random variables. The specific problem is: given that the observer can only visit one point per unit time, in what sequence should he make his visits so as to maximize the steady-state fraction of events he detects? We obtain some results about the optimal search policy and find the best policy precisely in some circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnold Barnett, 1976. "On Searching for Events of Limited Duration," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 438-451, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:24:y:1976:i:3:p:438-451
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.24.3.438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.24.3.438
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.24.3.438?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stanley J. Benkoski & Michael G. Monticino & James R. Weisinger, 1991. "A survey of the search theory literature," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(4), pages 469-494, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:24:y:1976:i:3:p:438-451. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.