Resource handling in Task Planning

Hello,
Where can I find more information on how resources are allocated/released in TP? I have seen there is a Resource_participation class which is referenced from the Performable_action class. Is there something like a Resource_allocation class, in a similar way as Performers are allocated to a Task Plan?
Thanks in advance!
Natalia

At the moment, the RESOURCE_PARTICIPATION and TASK_PARTICIPATION classes are used to define kinds of participant (autonomous party, usually a person), and kinds of resource. As you can see, the resource one is more or less a hook right now for future work, because we don’t have a detailed model of possible resources, i.e. things like beds, rooms, also consumables.

The allocation of a real-world person or resource to a Task is done at execution time, and the tracking of that relationship would be part of the ‘materialised’ model, i.e. the ‘M_’ classes, which are only minimally specified right now. It might never be specified in detail anyway.

What is likely to change? Well, the RESOURCE_PARTICIPATION class should have some more criteria added to it, e.g. potentially things like:

  • how many
  • optionality
  • conditionality
  • possibly allocation basis, e.g. ‘first available’, ‘with longest availability’ etc.

YAWL uses some of these ideas, but we have not done enough work to determine what we need here (for one thing, there are bound to be some healthcare specific things that are not in YAWL).

If you (or anyone) has particular requirements or design ideas in this area, feel free to share them here, we can look at incorporating them in future versions.

Ok, thank you for the explanation. I am not thinking of beds or that kind of resources, but more of clinical resources that cannot be used simultaneously by different treatment tasks, which necessity is something I am studying right now for my thesis. Thanks again!

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