abstract
- The challenge tackled in this study was to develop a practical decision support tool for coordination and spatial allocation of volunteers to aid people in isolation during lockdowns. The aim was to develop a tool that would allow for the sequential allocation of volunteerswhose number is not foreknown to offer service to as many people as possible, prioritizing the most vulnerable.We established service proximity and the location of vulnerable and marginalized populations as crucial aspects of the modeling. Consequently, the tool was developed in three stages: (1) assessing residential proximity to services with a Voronoi diagram; (2) calculating the most conservative scenario for allocation of volunteers to attend all vulnerable populations daily based on routing; and (3) coordinating the sequential allocation of volunteers focused on equity of service provision. The tool enables decision-makers to estimate and localize the population in need, obtain the number and allocation of volunteers needed to attend the population, and make critical decisions during a lockdown based on the previous estimations. The tool could particularly be useful in settings with limited resources and/or incomplete information systems.