Title
Joint ground and air emergency medical services coverage models: A greedy heuristic solution approach
Abstract
Aeromedical and ground ambulance services often team up in responding to trauma crashes, especially when the emergency helicopter is unable to land at the crash scene. We propose location-coverage models and a greedy heuristic for their solution to simultaneously locate ground and air ambulances, and landing zones (transfer points). We provide a coverage definition based on both response time and total service time, and consider three coverage options; only ground emergency medical services (EMS) coverage, only air EMS coverage, or joint coverage of ground and air EMS in which the patient is transferred from an ambulance into an emergency helicopter at a transfer point. To analyze this complex coverage situation we develop two sets of models, which are variations of the Location Set Covering Problem (LSCP) and the Maximal Covering Location Problem (MCLP). These models address uncertainty in spatial distribution of motor vehicle crash locations by providing coverage to a given set of both crash nodes and paths. The models also consider unavailability of ground ambulances by drawing upon concepts from backup coverage models. We illustrate our results on a case study that uses crash data from the state of New Mexico. The case study shows that crash node and path coverage percentage values decrease when ground ambulances are utilized only within their own jurisdiction.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1016/j.ejor.2010.05.047
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
Emergency services,Trauma crashes,Aeromedical,Location-coverage models,Backup coverage
Set cover problem,Crash,Mathematical optimization,Simulation,Emergency department,Operations research,Greedy algorithm,Unavailability,Emergency medical services,Mathematics,Service time,Backup
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
207
2
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
9
0.60
6
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Elif Tokar Erdemir1201.25
Rajan Batta284989.39
Peter Rogerson38115.11
Alan Blatt4433.63
Marie Flanigan5222.02