Ambulance Allocation using GIS

Christian Krog Lindeskov

AbstractThis report deals with the topic of combining Operations Research (OR) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to improve the ambulance service of Falck A/S, the leading provider of ambulance services in Denmark.

Using the GIS software ArcView 3.2a (ESRI) the geographic occurrence of accidents over time and three different location allocation models are investigated. Two models on minimizing the average response time and one model on minimizing the maximum response time.

The location allocation models used are the Multi Facility Location Allocation problem (MFLA), the p-center problem and the p-median problem. The method used for solving the MFLA is the Multi Restart Cooper. The p-center and p-median problems are solved using a metaheuristic called the Noising Method, very similar to Simulated Annealing.

The project is carried out under the assumption that the traditional stochastic models used for ambulance allocation do not match the way Falck operates very well. Hence the approach is to place the resources at hand as well as possible in a given situation, without consideration of what happens when the number of available ambulances changes.
KeywordsLocation, Allocation, GIS, Ambulances
TypeMaster's thesis [Academic thesis]
Year2002
PublisherInformatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark, DTU
AddressRichard Petersens Plads, Building 321, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby
SeriesIMM-EKS-2002-49
Electronic version(s)[pdf]
BibTeX data [bibtex]
IMM Group(s)Operations Research