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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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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