Abstract: Studies of vulnerable populations have an important and growing presence in the field of operations research and data analytics. In this talk, l will present one chapter of my dissertation work in which I use inferential modeling to better understand location characteristics for illicit massage businesses in the United States. Illicit massage businesses are a venue for sex and labor trafficking in the US and are primarily regulated at the state and local level, allowing for transience and spatial variation across local boundaries. Using web-scraped advertisement data over a 6-month period, I modeled illicit massage business prevalence at the Census tract and county levels. I used publicly available data to analyze location characteristics using a single- and multi-stage inferential machine learning model. Significant contributors to IMB prevalence included the state in which they were located and the racial composition, religious presence, and rent and income levels in the area surrounding the IMB. I will close the talk by discussing my insights on thoughtfully using data to model and understand vulnerable populations.

Bio: Anna White is a PhD candidate in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and a member of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Certificate Program. She specializes in applications-driven research using operations research tools including data analytics, simulation modeling, predictive modeling, spatial data analysis, and applied optimization. In her dissertation work, she has tackled issues including discriminatory housing policy, human trafficking, cell phone network resilience, and treatment access for opioid use disorder. She has also worked with the Air Force Research labs on communication systems modeling and simulation. In 2020, she served as President of the UM INFORMS Student Chapter, which received the Dean’s North Campus MLK Spirit Award for their work on anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion including a virtual fundraiser and journal club. She also led a pro-bono consulting project to design a facility layout for a new neighborhood tool lending library with a local neighborhood organization and Habitat for Humanity. Prior to Michigan, she received her bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering at Clemson University, where she conducted research on bus fleet electrification for the Clemson campus.