Professor John Quigley
Management Science
Personal statement
A common theme that runs through my research is risk modelling, whereby I develop models to support decision making under uncertainty. Much of my work makes use of both data analysis as well as expert judgement, often applied to support the design or maintenance of complex sociotechnical systems. The projects I am working on concern a range of application areas such as large manufacturing processes, maintenance of offshore wind farms and search and rescue operations for the coastguard supporting Inuit communities.
Examples of some recent projects I have been involved with are:
NSAR: This project is funded jointly by the NERC and Canada’s National Research Council (NRC). The aim of the project is to strengthen the whole-of-society search and rescue (SAR) system in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut through capacity and skill building, and by creating a decision support model for current and future planning, preparation, and infrastructure development
NEXUS: The Horizon 2020 funded project concerning vessel design to support offshore windfarm maintenance, where models were developed that link vessel design characteristics with windfarm productivity and so help identify optimal designs. A collaborative project with academics from Management Science and Naval, Ocean and Marine Engineering as well as industrial partners Kongsberg, Gondan, Global Marine, DNV, Sintef and Arttic.
PCAD: The EPSRC funded project to create algorithms and identify statistical methods to enable a predictive Computer Aided Design (CAD) system which enhances the productivity of engineering designers. A collaborative project with academics from Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management.
Resilience and Robustness of Dynamic Manufacturing Supply Networks: The EPSRC funded project to develop methods for supplier risk analysis. A collaborative project with academics from Management Science and the Universities of Bristol, Nottingham and Coventry as well as industrial partner Rolls Royce.
Productivity and Sustainability Management in the Responsive Factory: The EPSRC funded project is concerned with the use of real time data during manufacturing to optimise operations, identify opportunities for improvements in efficiency, productivity and sustainability through the use of probabilistic networks. This is a collaborative project with academics from the Universities of Edinburgh and Napier as well as the National Manufacturing Institure of Scotland.
I am committed to working with industry and have been involved in consultancy and applied research projects with a variety of organisations for example, Aero-Engine Controls, Rolls Royce, IrvingGQ, BAE SYSTEMS and the MOD. Beyond defence, I have experience of developing decision support models for asset management for energy utilities (e.g. Scottish Power, SSE), water utilities (KTP with Scottish Water), critical infrastructure (e.g. anchorage condition assessment of Forth Road Bridge) and risk of train derailments with Railway Safety and Standards Board.
I have worked with the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) training staff for elicitation and quantification of expert uncertainty as well as leading the COST Working Group on Processes and Procedures for eliciting expert judgment. The COST project resulted in the book Elicitation: The Science and Art of Structuring Judgement.
I am an Associate of the Society of Actuaries, a Chartered Statistician, and a member of the Safety and Reliability Society. I have a Bachelor of Mathematics in Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada and a PhD in Management Science from the University of Strathclyde. I am currently Vice Dean (Research) for the Strathclyde Business School. Between 2016-19 I was Head of Department for Management Science
Prize And Awards
Publications
- Smarter facility layout design : leveraging worker localisation data to minimise travel time and alleviate congestion
- Aslan Ayse, Vasantha Gokula, El Raoui Hanane, Quigley John, Hanson Jack, Corney Jonathan, Sherlock Andrew
- International Journal of Production Research (2024)
- Safer and efficient factory by predicting worker trajectories using spatio-temporal graph attention networks
- sarvan kumar satya, Vasantha Gokula, Corney Jonathan, Hanson Jack, Quigley John, El Raoui Hanane, Thompson Nathan, Sherlock Andrew
- International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference ASME 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (2024)
- Safer and efficient assemblies : harnessing real time worker movements with digital twins
- Sarvan Kumar Satya, Vasantha Gokula, Marzano Adelaide, Corney Jonathan, Hanson Jack, Quigley John, El Raoui Hanane, Thompson Nathan, Sherlock Andrew
- 21st International Conference on Manufacturing Research (2024)
- The Nunavut-Nunavik Search and Rescue project (NSAR) : enhancing SAR operations in Arctic Canada
- Belton Ian, Quigley John
- Arctic Science Summit Week (2024)
- Sustainability tweeting triumphs during the COP events : analyzing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) communication on Twitter
- El Alfy Amr, Quigley John, Tang Leilei, Al Haririr Yousseff, Weber Olaf
- Journal of Asia Business Studies (2024)
- Design of a serious game for safety in manufacturing industry using hybrid simulation modelling : towards eliciting risk preferences
- El-Raoui Hanane, Quigley John, Aslan Ayse, Vasantha Gokula, Hanson Jack, Corney Jonathan, Sherlock Andrew
- 2023 Winter Simulation Conference (2023)
Teaching
John provides specialist teaching for a number of programmes at various levels. These have included teaching Management Science at all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate as well as Executive Education. John has taught in 10 different international centres across Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, as well as Executive Education in Canada.
John is committed to making effective use of technology to support teaching and learning. He has been involved in managing, developing and teaching on pedagogically successful online and distance courses, as well as investigating the effectiveness of using virtual reality environments to support teaching.
Professional Activities
- CABS REF 2028 Symposium: Navigating a changing research assessment exercise
- Recipient
- 1/2/2024
- Scientific methods for integrating expert knowledge in Bayesian models
- Examiner
- 23/1/2024
- Why information on uncertainty is useful, and how it can help risk management and decision-making
- Speaker
- 22/11/2021
- Bayesian Methods and Knowledge Elicitation
- Speaker
- 2/6/2019
- Deriving Figures from Analogies: Fatal Weapons or Innocent Toys for Elicitation Bias
- Speaker
- 15/5/2019
- Empirical Bayes: Its Now... It's Wow!
- Speaker
- 26/9/2016
Projects
- The Role of Hydrogen in the Decarbonisation of the Steel Industry
- Steward, Elise (Principal Investigator) Quigley, John (Principal Investigator) Roberts, Jen (Principal Investigator) Sherlock, Andrew (Principal Investigator)
- This is an interdisciplinary and international research project in collaboration with the University of Waterloo, Canada, which aims to identify the key gaps, barriers and priorities for further research regarding the role of hydrogen in the decarbonising the steel industry, upstream and downstream in the UK and Ontario. The National Manufacturing Institute of Scotland (NMIS) has formed a conglomerate of industrial partners from the UK forging industry and furnace companies to develop hydrogen powered furnace technology for the forging process. This project will supplement their study by evaluating the decision problem from the perspective of the industrialist. Interviews will be conducted with key businesses and stakeholders across the steel industries of the UK and Ontario, to acquire a deep understanding of the barriers, enablers, consequences and uncertainties of industrial processes and hydrogen adoption, thus ultimately informing the development of a novel decision-making framework to assist the sustainable transition of the industry.
This project will add substantial value to the existing knowledge of hydrogen implementation since barriers will be recognised and potential solutions provided. A report will also be produced which will comprise a review of existing processes, potential opportunities for decarbonisation across both production and processing, discussion of the issue from an industry-wide perspective (including consideration of carbon emissions and ‘net-zero’ objectives, carbon taxes, government policy, and hydrogen colour classification), modelling (hydrogen production and storage, transportation and utilisation), prospective risks and rewards (hydrogen embrittlement, costs, technology replacement), and a decision analysis.
Supervisors include: Prof John Quigley, Management Science; Dr Jen Roberts, Civil & Environmental Engineering; and Dr Andrew Sherlock, NMIS. - 01-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2023
- Nunavut Search and Rescue (NSAR) Project: Supporting Inuit Health and Well-Being, Food Security, Economic Development, and Community Resilience
- Quigley, John (Principal Investigator) Howick, Susan (Co-investigator) Walls, Lesley (Co-investigator) Wright, George (Co-investigator)
- 06-Jan-2022 - 05-Jan-2025
- Productivity and Sustainability Management in the Responsive Factory (Responsive Manufacturing)
- Quigley, John (Principal Investigator) Sherlock, Andrew (Co-investigator)
- 18-Jan-2021 - 17-Jan-2024
- Working across Disciplines to Understand and Improve Mass Evacuations: Examining Different Types of Risk and Contextual Pressures
- Quigley, Kevin (Principal Investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator)
- People who are responsible for mass evacuations during natural disasters are confronted with significant challenges: they must allocate and coordinate limited resources in a dynamic context, often in degraded conditions, and their decisions are consequential, time-constrained and often irreversible. Despite the risks that underpin these decisions and the real-world experience that exists in this domain, there is a dearth of study and knowledge concerning how those responsible for mass evacuation carry out their jobs, and how it might be generalized and improved. These events happen rarely and are dispersed across the country; this, coupled with bureaucratic and market constraints, diminish incentives and opportunities to study such low probability events. Yet there is reason to be concerned. From a national perspective, these events are happening much more often, and at a growing and significant human, financial and environmental cost.
This research project brings together a group of practitioners and scholars with expertise and experience in risk and evacuation. Our partners come from a variety of sectors, including academe, emergency management, telecommunications, politics and the voluntary sector, such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army. The project will be structured according to two interdisciplinary risk frameworks to allow us to examine the interplay between social context and risk characterization to determine the combined impact the two have on government risk regulation regimes. Contextual factors include dynamics such as the role of law and insurance, media and popular opinion, and the role of organized interests. Risk characterization distinguishes between those events that are complex, uncertain and ambiguous.
Our specific objectives are as follows.
1. Partner leading risk scholars with those that are responsible for mass evacuation to develop a shared understanding of evacuation risks.
2. Examine what guides the thinking and actions of those responsible for evacuation, considering the knowledge we have of certain risks and the contextual pressures that are exerted on the regime.
3. Improve dialogue between researchers, practitioners and communities in this domain.
4. Contribute to training tools, such as online tests and a tactical decision game, that help to train emergency managers to address risks during mass evacuations. - 01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2023
- Development of a decision support system for the management of infrastructure
- Tubaldi, Enrico (Principal Investigator) Patelli, Edoardo (Co-investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator)
- 06-Jan-2020 - 05-Jan-2022
- Global Environmental Monitoring and Policy (GEMaP) Centre for Doctoral Training: Quantifying the risks and impacts of climate change on water resources in Scotland.
- Peters, Joshua (Principal Investigator) Roberts, Jen (Principal Investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator)
- This is an exciting opportunity to engage in international research to reduce risks of climate change on water resources. The studentship will be developing innovative decision-making techniques as well as identifying potential policy interventions to enhance actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change, or to reduce the impacts of climate change.
- 01-Jan-2019