WSC 2022 Best Contributed Application Paper Award

From left: Prof Cai Wentong (Associate Chair, Faculty), Dr Kwak Jaeyoung (Research Fellow) and Mr Su Boyi (former SCSE Research Associate).

NTU SCSE would like to extend congratulations to our colleagues from Parallel and Distributed Computing Laboratory (PDCL) for winning the Best Contributed Application Paper Award at the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) 2022 with their manuscript titled "A simulation-based evacuation elevator allocation analysis for multi-level hospital emergency department".  The authors are:

• Mr Boyi Su, Dr Jaeyoung Kwak: SCSE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Dr Ahmad Reza Pourghaderi: SingHealth, Singapore
• Prof Michael H Lees: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Dr Kenneth BK Tan, Ms Shin Yi Loo, Dr Ivan SY Chua, Dr Joy LJ Quah: Singapore General Hospital, Singapore
• Prof Wentong Cai: SCSE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Prof Marcus EH Ong: Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore 

WSC recognizes contributed papers of exceptionally high quality and implements a rigorous process in selecting the winners.  Out of 491 submitted papers, three finalists were selected by the track chairs.  Among the three finalists, the winner was eventually selected by an independent panel of three distinguished members of the simulation community.  This academic achievement is a high recognition for the research work by the authors in the simulation field. 

The award-winning paper is the result of a collaborative research project with Singapore General Hospital (SGH), supported under Virtual Singapore programme.  It presents a simulation model to analyze evacuation in a multi-level hospital emergency department.  Evacuation modelling in such scenarios is complex since emergency departments in hospitals usually have patients with severe illness and limited mobility.  Especially, the multi-level facility requires modelling both horizontal and vertical movement, making it even more challenging. 

The panel’s decision was based on the following: “All three nominated papers were very good and our ratings very close.  The panel was impressed by this paper for the value of the application in a real world setting in the topic of elevator models of low-rise buildings in healthcare.  The paper was rated highly especially for the rigor of the analysis and methods used and for the evidence of the benefit and impact of the solution to evacuation planning in healthcare settings.” 

WSC is the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation, with the principal focus being discrete-event simulation and combined discrete-continuous simulation.  In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC provides the central meeting place for simulation practitioners, researchers, and vendors working in all disciplines in industrial, governmental, military, and academic sectors.  WSC 2022 was held in Singapore from 11 to 14 December.  After more than 50 years since its inception, it was the very first time the conference was held in Asia, which attracted more than 700 participants.  The theme of WSC 2022 is to “Reimagine Tomorrow”, to evaluate not just living in an urban future where cities are safe, green, and environmentally secure with seamless power, water, and transportation networks, but also working in an environment where both sustainable high-tech manufacturing and novel services play an essential role. 

Read more: 
https://meetings.informs.org/wordpress/wsc2022/