Optimization and Operations Research in Mitigation of a Pandemic

The pandemic of COVID-19 initiated in 2019 and spread all over the world in 2020 has caused significant damages to the human society, making troubles to all aspects of our daily life. Facing the serious outbreak of the virus, we consider possible solutions from the perspectives of both governments and enterprises. Particularly, this paper discusses several applications of supply chain management, public resource allocation, and pandemic prevention using optimization and machine learning methods. Some useful insights in mitigating the pandemic and economy reopening are provided at the end of this paper. These insights might help governments to reduce the severity of the current pandemic and prevent the next round of outbreak. They may also improve companies’ reactions to the increasing uncertainties appearing in the business operations. Although the coronavirus imposes challenges to the entire society at the moment, we are confident to develop new techniques to prevent and eradicate the disease.