Time-dependent ambulance allocation considering data-driven empirically required coverage

Abstract

Empirical studies considering the location and relocation of emergency medical service (EMS) vehicles in an urban region provide important insight into dynamic changes during the day. Within a 24-hour cycle, the demand, travel time, speed of ambulances and areas of coverage change. Nevertheless, most existing approaches in literature ignore these variations and require a (temporally and spatially) fixed (double) coverage of the planning area. Neglecting these variations and fixation of the coverage could lead to an inaccurate estimation of the time-dependent fleet size and individual positioning of ambulances. Through extensive data collection, now it is possible to precisely determine the required coverage of demand areas. Based on data-driven optimization, a new approach is presented, maximizing the flexible, empirically determined required coverage, which has been adjusted for variations due to day-time and site. This coverage prevents the EMS system from unavailability of ambulances due to parallel operations to ensure an improved coverage of the planning area closer to realistic demand. An integer linear programming model is formulated in order to locate and relocate ambulances. The use of such a programming model is supported by a comprehensive case study, which strongly suggests that through such a model, these objectives can be achieved and lead to greater cost-effectiveness and quality of emergency care.

Redesigning the diagnostic pathway for chest pain patients in emergency departments

“…This is in line with recent publications in healthcare and . 9 Adjusted distribution modelling the pre-hospital delay compared to distributions reported in suitable studies in the literature leads to sufficient level of detail [13]. The pre-hospital delay was best described in terms of a log-normal distribution.…”

Emergency medical services and beyond: Addressing new challenges through a wide literature review

“…Degel et al [68] develop a multi-period model for EMS location and relocation planning at a tactical level in which the temporal and spatial variations in demand and travel times are captured. Three different criteria are considered in the objective function of the model: the first criterion maximizes the total demand covered with respect to the flexible required coverage level, the second criterion minimizes the total number of relocations over the planning horizon, and the third criterion minimizes the total number of flexible EMS vehicle sites (volunteer fire departments and hospitals) occupied by EMS vehicles during all time periods.…”

Real-time ambulance relocation: Assessing real-time redeployment strategies for ambulance relocation

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