IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i18p11752-d919020.html

Fair Assignment for Reserved Nucleic Acid Testing

Author

Listed:
  • Na Xie

    (School of Management Science and Engineering, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China)

  • Zhidong Liu

    (School of Management Science and Engineering, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China)

  • Xiqun (Michael) Chen

    (College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
    Alibaba-Zhejiang University Joint Research Institute of Frontier Technologies, Hangzhou 310027, China)

  • Shen Li

    (Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China)

Abstract

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is now treating the health of millions of people worldwide. The Chinese government now applies nucleic acid testing as a tool to detect patients from healthy people to control the spread of COVID-19. However, people may come to the nucleic acid testing stations simultaneously, leading to long queues and wasting time. In this paper, we proposed the reserved nucleic acid testing method, which could be easily implemented via Web applications associated with nucleic acid testing. Its key idea is to assign people to different pre-scheduled time slots so that the number of people arriving at a certain time slot can be controlled under the capacity, and thus congestion can be relieved. The key question is how to assign people in a fair manner. We propose a concise model to formalize and analyze the minimum total envy and pairwise fairness assignment problem for a variety of reservation-based applications, including nuclear acid testing. Its objective is to maximize the sum of each person’s utility under the capacity constraints of time slots. The decision variables are the time slot assignment of each person. We show that the envy-freeness solution is usually unavailable. However, we can minimize the total envy through appropriate arrangements and realize pairwise fairness with equal-chance shuffling.

Suggested Citation

  • Na Xie & Zhidong Liu & Xiqun (Michael) Chen & Shen Li, 2022. "Fair Assignment for Reserved Nucleic Acid Testing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-12, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:18:p:11752-:d:919020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11752/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11752/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vahid Zeighami & François Soumis, 2019. "Combining Benders’ Decomposition and Column Generation for Integrated Crew Pairing and Personalized Crew Assignment Problems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(5), pages 1479-1499, September.
    2. David G. Luenberger & Yinyu Ye, 2016. "Linear and Nonlinear Programming," International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Springer, edition 4, number 978-3-319-18842-3, March.
    3. H. W. Kuhn, 1955. "The Hungarian method for the assignment problem," Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(1‐2), pages 83-97, March.
    4. Ahmed, Qureshi Intikhab & Lu, Huapu & Ye, Shi, 2008. "Urban transportation and equity: A case study of Beijing and Karachi," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 125-139, January.
    5. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1950. "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4), pages 328-328.
    6. K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leo Katz & Alvaro Sandroni, 2020. "Limits on power and rationality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 507-521, March.
    2. Nicola Acocella-super-, 2017. "The Rise And Decline Of Economic Policy As An Autonomous Discipline: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 661-677, July.
    3. Allan M. Feldman & Roberto Serrano, 2006. "Darwinian Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: Two Simple Single-Profile Versions," Working Papers 2006-11, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    4. Maurice Salles, 2006. "La théorie du choix social : de l'importance des mathématiques," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 200617, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    5. Raúl Pérez-Fernández & Bernard De Baets, 2018. "The supercovering relation, the pairwise winner, and more missing links between Borda and Condorcet," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(2), pages 329-352, February.
    6. Crispin H. V. Cooper, 2020. "Quantitative Models of Well-Being to Inform Policy: Problems and Opportunities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-13, April.
    7. Lombardi, Michele & Yoshihara, Naoki, 2016. "Partially-honest Nash Implementation with Non-connected Honesty Standards," Discussion Paper Series 633, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    8. List, Christian & Polak, Ben, 2010. "Introduction to judgment aggregation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 441-466, March.
    9. Kenter, Jasper O. & Bryce, Rosalind & Christie, Michael & Cooper, Nigel & Hockley, Neal & Irvine, Katherine N. & Fazey, Ioan & O’Brien, Liz & Orchard-Webb, Johanne & Ravenscroft, Neil & Raymond, Chris, 2016. "Shared values and deliberative valuation: Future directions," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(PB), pages 358-371.
    10. Jingyi Xue, 2018. "Fair division with uncertain needs," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(1), pages 105-136, June.
    11. María Gabriela Palacio, 2016. "Institutionalizing segregation: Conditional cash transfers and employment choices," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-91, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. András Frank, 2005. "On Kuhn's Hungarian Method—A tribute from Hungary," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 2-5, February.
    13. Tetsuya, Saito, 2007. "Military Expenditures of Dictatorial Regimes: A Strategic Theory," MPRA Paper 6155, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Juan D Moreno-Ternero & John E Roemer, 2006. "Impartiality, Priority, and Solidarity in the Theory of Justice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1419-1427, September.
    15. Amit Kumar & Anila Gupta, 2013. "Mehar’s methods for fuzzy assignment problems with restrictions," Fuzzy Information and Engineering, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 27-44, March.
    16. António Osório, 2020. "Performance Evaluation: Subjectivity, Bias and Judgment Style in Sport," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 655-678, August.
    17. Parvin Ahmadi & Iman Gholampour & Mahmoud Tabandeh, 2018. "Cluster-based sparse topical coding for topic mining and document clustering," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 12(3), pages 537-558, September.
    18. Nolan, Matt, 2018. "Horizontal and Vertical Equity in the New Zealand Tax-Transfer System: 1988-2013," Working Paper Series 7657, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    19. Zhou, Shiqi & Lin, Meng & He, Jun & Wu, Yuzeng & Wang, Xu, 2025. "Unsupervised clustering research of nuclear power plants under unlabeled unknown fault diagnosis scenario," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    20. Darcy W. E. Allen & Chris Berg & Sinclair Davidson & Jason Potts, 2022. "On Coase and COVID-19," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 107-125, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:18:p:11752-:d:919020. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.