Dutch project earns Edelman

According to the classic tale “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates,” a Little Dutch Boy once saved Holland by sticking his finger in a hole in a dike, thereby stemming the flow of water and averting disaster.

A modern-day retelling of the tale took place during the 2013 Franz Edelman Award Competition, only this time it was fact, not fiction. A consortium of Dutch organizations, headed by the Dutch Delta Program Commissioner, used high-end analytics such as operations research to develop and implement a new method for calculating the most efficient levels of flood protection for the Netherlands.

By identifying which dikes to fortify and to what extent, the massive project considerably improved the system of dikes that protect the Netherlands in an era of rising seas while simultaneously saving the nation eight billion Euros in unnecessary expenditures.

The project won the prestigious Edelman Award, besting other outstanding analytics work from finalists Baosteel, Chevron, Dell, Kroger and McKesson.

Presented by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Edelman Award is widely considered the “Super Bowl” of high-end analytics. It honors the best application of O.R. following a nearly yearlong competition that begins with a nomination process, continues with a vetting process and concludes at the spring INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research with a series of finalists’ presentations and judges’ deliberations, all capped by the naming of the winner at the Edelman Awards Gala.

When asked at the Oscar-like gala to sum up the complexity of the Dutch dike project and the sophistication of the analytical work involved, Edelman judge Graham Rand quipped, “It’s a little bit more than putting your finger in the dike.”

For more on the Edelman and other awards presented in conjunction with the INFORMS conference in San Antonio, Texas, in April, see page 64.

INFORMS, the world’s leading association for professionals in the fields of operations research, management science and analytics, used the conference as a site to administer it’s inaugural Certified Analytics Professional (CAP™) examination. Along with helping analytics professionals boost their careers and elevate themselves in the job market, the CAP™ program is also designed to help hiring managers identify qualified analytical talent. For more on the CAP™ program, see page 22.