Fuzzy resource management analysis

Abstract

Traditionally, the efficient and productive delivery of services is a major goal of public institutions. This is especially true in the law enforcement industry. Here, the management of a set of dynamic resources (police patrol personnel) is central to the delivery of services. In the past there have been two major perspectives towards the management of low enforcement resources: first, ignoring all patterns in demands resources are distributed equally across time and space. Second, resources are deployed according to the proportionate distribution of demands. In both of these models the resources are manipulated or controlled according to an algorithm derived independently from demand patterns. These models are highly vulnerable to shifts in demand patterns and can be strategically inefficient and tactically unstable. In this paper a new algorithmic process is defined for the strategic and tactical evaluation of resource needs for police patrolling which combines deployment and control strategies, and simulates combinations of the strategies for comparative analysis. It was discovered that the degree of reliance upon the analysis of future resource usage and the accuracy of the projection of the future demands had a significant impact on the performance of the methodologies studied. This process can be used to draw general conclusions about patrolling systems.