96. Preference-based unit assignment for Uruguayan housing cooperatives
Invited abstract in session TC-18: Developing green and sustainable communities (EWG-ORD Workshop 1), stream OR for Development and Developing Countries.
Tuesday, 12:30-14:00Room: 42 (building: 116)
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Hector Cancela
|
| Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de la República |
Abstract
Since the late 1960's, Uruguay has developed an important system of housing cooperatives, which are an affordable option with many advantages over traditional options such as buying or renting a house or apartment.
A housing cooperative in Uruguay usually involves between 20 and 80 members. After the buildings are completed, a assignment is performed, giving to each member (as long as he/she continues to participate in the cooperative) the right to live in the assigned unit. The assignment is most usually performed by a random draw; which does not take into account individual preferences of the members over the different units.
In this presentation, we discuss the use of optimization methods to perform assignments which take into account the preferences of the cooperative members. Working with some Uruguayan cooperatives, we found that the total satisfaction, the minimum individual satisfactionwere important criteria. Based on these insights, we developed a system employing a a two-stage Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization model taking into account the minimum individual satisfaction and the total satisfaction. This system has already been applied in more than 30 cooperatives, involving more than 1000 habitational units, obtaining large improvements in comparison to random draws. Further work is being performed to include other criteria such as minimizing the difference between individual satisfactions.
Keywords
- Mathematical Programming
- Practice of OR
- Developing Countries
Status: accepted
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