Resource Allocation Examples
Resource allocation is a process that’s integrated in various industries with slightly different use cases. Below are a few of the most common use cases.
Resource Allocation in Economics
Resource allocation in economics is, basically, the assignment of currently available resources to a variety of uses as needed. It’s mainly focused on identifying the ideal conditions under which resource allocation mechanisms lead to Pareto efficiency. Pareto efficiency, named after Italian economist and political scientist Vilfredo Pareto, refers to a condition where resources are allocated in the most economically efficient manner possible. In Pareto-efficient outcomes, no economic changes can be made for the betterment of a certain party without making at least one other party worse off. As such, economical efficiency in this sense doesn’t imply fairness or equality.
Resource Allocation in Project Management
Project management is a broad area of expertise that covers a number of smaller disciplines, one of which is resource allocation. Resource allocation in project management helps in providing a clear picture of how much work has to be done to achieve project goals, even going so far as to analyze existing risks of a certain project. Most importantly, it helps manage and control the workload so employees won’t feel burned out and lose sight of the projects larger goals.
Resource Allocation in Healthcare
Resource allocation in healthcare is the distribution of health-related materials and services among a variety of people and use cases. It’s classified under two levels of decision making:
- Micro-allocation
Micro-allocation covers decisions made on an individual level, like “patient selection.” Patient selection is the process of determining who among a set of patients who need a particular scarce service or resource should receive it. It sometimes also makes decisions for individual patients regarding which among a number of potentially beneficial treatments they should get, especially when the time to make a decision is limited .
- Macro-allocation
Macro-allocation involves decisions made on a larger scale, determining the amount of resources to be allocated to particular types of healthcare services. It also helps make crucial decisions regarding budgets and spending of healthcare institutions or even nations regarding how much resources should be allocated to particular institutions or specific curative medicine.
Resource Allocation in SaaS
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) resource allocation refers to how cloud-based web applications and other SaaS offerings allocate software services to users. SaaS resource-sharing applications are used to facilitate resource allocation using repositories or databases, which also aid in isolating and storing user data and software customizations in a logical manner. SaaS resource sharing falls under two main models:
- Shared repository model
This is implemented by partitioning multiple types of user data contained in a single database. This allows the logical isolation of each user of the SaaS application via a unique identifier. This allows for database queries to retrieve and manage data for each user based on their unique identifier.
Dedicated repository model
This model deploys a separate logical database for each SaaS application user. This model is ideal for applications with a small number of users, allowing for a more efficient allocation of resources. It is more costly to maintain but provides better security than a shared repository in terms of data storage and sharing.