Designing modular capacitated emergency medical service using information on ambulance trip
2021, Operational Research: An International Journal, 21, pp.1723-1742
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the design of a two-tiered emergency medical service (EMS) system. The objective remains in determining the location and the capacity of modular ambulance stations that minimize the EMS system’s cost while respecting a pre-specified response time. A novel approach considering advanced information on ambulance trip and accounting for ambulance busy fractions is proposed. This approach is compared to its counterpart traditional approach that does not consider ambulance trip. Two mixed integer linear programs are developed. Experimentation of the two models was conducted on a real life case study. The obtained results pointed out the usefulness and superiority of the proposed approach. A cost saving of 3% is achieved in addition to the reduction in ambulance round-trip time