Design of a Resource Allocation Planning System

Abstract

This paper proposes a generic human-computer software user interface design, called the Resource Allocation Planning System (RAPS), designed to support a person making resource allocation decisions with or without automation support. Although there are many algorithms for automatically solving resource allocation problems, it is often the case that human judgment is also required. Also, while there are software user interfaces to support decision-making for specific resource allocation problems, most of them serve more as organizational charts than as decision-support systems, and most of them become increasingly difficult to use as the size of the resource allocation problem increases. This paper discusses the design and rationale for RAPS and gives several examples of how RAPS can be adapted to a specific resource allocation problems.