Fair Queue-Based Resource Allocation for Community Sharing Platforms

Abstract

Community sharing platforms are common for redistributing excess resources like food, clothes, and home items to people within a given locality. While the platforms are useful in waste reduction and resource accessibility, some platforms encounter challenges when several people within the community request a particular resource at the same time. In such cases, the donors have to select the recipients manually, which can be associated with confusion and injustices. In an unstructured environment, the donor can rely on the order of messages or their own discretion when selecting a receiver. This can lead to a situation where a few people receive resources regularly while others hardly get any. Eventually, people will lack confidence in the platform, and the number of users will go down. As such, fairness becomes a critical component in maintaining a resource-sharing application. To address this problem, a queue-based allocation system is therefore proposed. The system keeps track of the incoming requests in a sequential manner and displays them to the donor in an organized manner. After the donor approves the receiver, the system automatically changes the status and does not allow other people to request the same item. The proposed system is developed through the use of a mobile app that is linked to a real-time database. The results have shown that organized allocation helps in reducing conflicts and improving transparency.
To resolve this problem, a resource allocation system using a queue mechanism is proposed. The system keeps track of the requests in a sequential manner and displays them to the donors in an organized list. Once a receiver is accepted, the system automatically changes the status and does not allow repeated claims for the resource, which will be allocated to only one user.