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Resource allocation

 
Geography Dictionary: resource allocation

The assessment of the value of a resource or of the effects of exploiting a resource. The quantity of a resource may be determined in absolute terms, such as area, or in terms of the ability of man to utilize it. Values of resources may also be seen in social terms, although these are difficult to cost.

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Wikipedia: Resource allocation
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Resource allocation is used to assign the available resources in an economic way. It is part of resource management.

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Strategic planning

In strategic planning, resource allocation is a plan for using available resources, for example human resources, especially in the near term, to achieve goals for the future. It is the process of allocating resources among the various projects or business units.

The plan has two parts: Firstly, there is the basic allocation decision and secondly there are contingency mechanisms. The basic allocation decision is the choice of which items to fund in the plan, and what level of funding it should receive, and which to leave unfunded: the resources are allocated to some items, not to others.

There are two contingency mechanisms. There is a priority ranking of items excluded from the plan, showing which items to fund if more resources should become available; and there is a priority ranking of some items included in the plan, showing which items should be sacrificed if total funding must be reduced.

Resource Leveling

The main objective is to smooth resources requirements by shifting slack jobs beyond periods of peak requirements. Some of the methods essentially replicate what a human scheduler would do if he had enough time; others make use of unusual devices or procedures designed especially for the computer. They of course depend for their success on the speed and capabilities of electronic computers.

Resource Allocation Algorithms

Resource allocation may be decided by using computer programs applied to a specific domain to automatically and dynamically distribute resources to applicants. It may be considered as a specialized case of automatic scheduling.

This is especially common in electronic devices dedicated to routing and communication. For example channel allocation in wireless communication may be decided by a base transceiver station using an appropriate algorithm. [1]

One class of resource allocation algorithms is the auction class, whereby applicants bid for the best resource(s) according to their balance of "money", as in a online auction business model (also see Auction theory).

In one paper on CPU time slice allocation [2] an auction algorithm is compared to Proportional Share Scheduling.

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Copyrights:

Geography Dictionary. A Dictionary of Geography. Copyright © Susan Mayhew 1992, 1997, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Resource allocation" Read more