Assignment of resources among possible uses
In
economics
,
resource allocation
is the assignment of available
resources
to various uses. In the context of an entire economy, resources can be allocated by various means, such as
markets
, or
planning
.
In
project management
,
resource allocation
or
resource management
is the scheduling of activities and the resources required by those activities while taking into consideration both the resource availability and the project time.
[1]
Economics
[
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In
economics
, the field of
public finance
deals with three broad areas:
microeconomic
stabilization, the
distribution of income
and wealth, and the allocation of resources. Much of the study of the allocation of resources is devoted to finding the conditions under which particular mechanisms of resource allocation lead to
Pareto efficient
outcomes, in which no party's situation can be improved without hurting that of another party.
Strategic planning
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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 scarce resources among the various
projects
or business units.
There are a number of approaches to solving resource allocation problems e.g. resources can be allocated using a manual approach, an algorithmic approach (see below),
[2]
or a combination of both.
[3]
There may be contingency mechanisms such as a priority ranking of items excluded from the plan, showing which items to fund if more resources should become available and a priority ranking of some items included in the plan, showing which items should be sacrificed if total funding must be reduced.
[4]
Algorithms
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Resource allocation may be decided by using
computer programs
applied to a specific domain to automatically and dynamically distribute resources to applicants.
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
.
[5]
One class of resource whereby applicants bid for the best resource(s) according to their balance of "money", as in an
online auction business model
(see also
auction theory
).
In one paper on
CPU
time slice
allocation
[6]
an auction algorithm is compared to
proportional share scheduling
.
See also
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References
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