IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v207y2010i3p1293-1303.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ambulance location and relocation problems with time-dependent travel times

Author

Listed:
  • Schmid, Verena
  • Doerner, Karl F.

Abstract

Emergency service providers are facing the following problem: how and where to locate vehicles in order to cover potential future demand effectively. Ambulances are supposed to be located at designated locations such that in case of an emergency the patients can be reached in a time-efficient manner. A patient is said to be covered by a vehicle if (s)he can be reached by an ambulance within a predefined time limit. Due to variations in speed and the resulting travel times it is not sufficient to solve the static ambulance location problem once using fixed average travel times, as the coverage areas themselves change throughout the day. Hence we developed a multi-period version, taking into account time-varying coverage areas, where we allow vehicles to be repositioned in order to maintain a certain coverage standard throughout the planning horizon. We have formulated a mixed integer program for the problem at hand, which tries to optimize coverage at various points in time simultaneously. The problem is solved metaheuristically using variable neighborhood search. We show that it is essential to consider time-dependent variations in travel times and coverage respectively. When ignoring them the resulting objective will be overestimated by more than 24%. By taking into account these variations explicitly the solution on average can be improved by more than 10%.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmid, Verena & Doerner, Karl F., 2010. "Ambulance location and relocation problems with time-dependent travel times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1293-1303, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:207:y:2010:i:3:p:1293-1303
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377-2217(10)00472-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark S. Daskin, 1983. "A Maximum Expected Covering Location Model: Formulation, Properties and Heuristic Solution," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 48-70, February.
    2. Brotcorne, Luce & Laporte, Gilbert & Semet, Frederic, 2003. "Ambulance location and relocation models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 451-463, June.
    3. Constantine Toregas & Ralph Swain & Charles ReVelle & Lawrence Bergman, 1971. "The Location of Emergency Service Facilities," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(6), pages 1363-1373, October.
    4. M Gendreau & G Laporte & F Semet, 2006. "The maximal expected coverage relocation problem for emergency vehicles," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(1), pages 22-28, January.
    5. Kathleen Hogan & Charles ReVelle, 1986. "Concepts and Applications of Backup Coverage," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(11), pages 1434-1444, November.
    6. Bernhard Fleischmann & Martin Gietz & Stefan Gnutzmann, 2004. "Time-Varying Travel Times in Vehicle Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(2), pages 160-173, May.
    7. Chryssi Malandraki & Mark S. Daskin, 1992. "Time Dependent Vehicle Routing Problems: Formulations, Properties and Heuristic Algorithms," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(3), pages 185-200, August.
    8. Susan Budge & Armann Ingolfsson & Dawit Zerom, 2010. "Empirical Analysis of Ambulance Travel Times: The Case of Calgary Emergency Medical Services," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 716-723, April.
    9. Donati, Alberto V. & Montemanni, Roberto & Casagrande, Norman & Rizzoli, Andrea E. & Gambardella, Luca M., 2008. "Time dependent vehicle routing problem with a multi ant colony system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 185(3), pages 1174-1191, March.
    10. Peter Kolesar & Warren Walker & Jack Hausner, 1975. "Determining the Relation between Fire Engine Travel Times and Travel Distances in New York City," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(4), pages 614-627, August.
    11. R. Francis & T. Lowe & M. Rayco & A. Tamir, 2009. "Aggregation error for location models: survey and analysis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 171-208, March.
    12. Ichoua, Soumia & Gendreau, Michel & Potvin, Jean-Yves, 2003. "Vehicle dispatching with time-dependent travel times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 379-396, January.
    13. Repede, John F. & Bernardo, John J., 1994. "Developing and validating a decision support system for locating emergency medical vehicles in Louisville, Kentucky," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 567-581, June.
    14. Jack Brimberg & Pierre Hansen & Nenad Mladenović & Eric D. Taillard, 2000. "Improvements and Comparison of Heuristics for Solving the Uncapacitated Multisource Weber Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 444-460, June.
    15. Hansen, Pierre & Mladenovic, Nenad, 2001. "Variable neighborhood search: Principles and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 449-467, May.
    16. Bernhard Fleischmann & Stefan Gnutzmann & Elke Sandvoß, 2004. "Dynamic Vehicle Routing Based on Online Traffic Information," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 420-433, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bélanger, V. & Lanzarone, E. & Nicoletta, V. & Ruiz, A. & Soriano, P., 2020. "A recursive simulation-optimization framework for the ambulance location and dispatching problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 713-725.
    2. Xueping Li & Zhaoxia Zhao & Xiaoyan Zhu & Tami Wyatt, 2011. "Covering models and optimization techniques for emergency response facility location and planning: a review," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 74(3), pages 281-310, December.
    3. Shariat-Mohaymany, Afshin & Babaei, Mohsen & Moadi, Saeed & Amiripour, Sayyed Mahdi, 2012. "Linear upper-bound unavailability set covering models for locating ambulances: Application to Tehran rural roads," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 263-272.
    4. Zvi Drezner & Vladimir Marianov & George O. Wesolowsky, 2016. "Maximizing the minimum cover probability by emergency facilities," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 246(1), pages 349-362, November.
    5. Soo-Haeng Cho & Hoon Jang & Taesik Lee & John Turner, 2014. "Simultaneous Location of Trauma Centers and Helicopters for Emergency Medical Service Planning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(4), pages 751-771, August.
    6. Boyacı, Burak & Geroliminis, Nikolas, 2015. "Approximation methods for large-scale spatial queueing systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 151-181.
    7. McCormack, Richard & Coates, Graham, 2015. "A simulation model to enable the optimization of ambulance fleet allocation and base station location for increased patient survival," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 247(1), pages 294-309.
    8. Schmid, Verena, 2012. "Solving the dynamic ambulance relocation and dispatching problem using approximate dynamic programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(3), pages 611-621.
    9. Inkyung Sung & Taesik Lee, 2018. "Scenario-based approach for the ambulance location problem with stochastic call arrivals under a dispatching policy," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 153-170, June.
    10. Bélanger, V. & Ruiz, A. & Soriano, P., 2019. "Recent optimization models and trends in location, relocation, and dispatching of emergency medical vehicles," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(1), pages 1-23.
    11. Dirk Degel & Lara Wiesche & Sebastian Rachuba & Brigitte Werners, 2015. "Time-dependent ambulance allocation considering data-driven empirically required coverage," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 444-458, December.
    12. Iloglu, Suzan & Albert, Laura A., 2020. "A maximal multiple coverage and network restoration problem for disaster recovery," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 7(C).
    13. Geroliminis, Nikolas & Kepaptsoglou, Konstantinos & Karlaftis, Matthew G., 2011. "A hybrid hypercube - Genetic algorithm approach for deploying many emergency response mobile units in an urban network," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 287-300, April.
    14. Diego Cattaruzza & Nabil Absi & Dominique Feillet & Jesús González-Feliu, 2017. "Vehicle routing problems for city logistics," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 6(1), pages 51-79, March.
    15. Shayesta Wajid & N. Nezamuddin, 2023. "Optimizing emergency services for road safety using a decomposition method: a case study of Delhi," OPSEARCH, Springer;Operational Research Society of India, vol. 60(1), pages 155-173, March.
    16. Carvalho, A.S. & Captivo, M.E. & Marques, I., 2020. "Integrating the ambulance dispatching and relocation problems to maximize system’s preparedness," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 1064-1080.
    17. M Gendreau & G Laporte & F Semet, 2006. "The maximal expected coverage relocation problem for emergency vehicles," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(1), pages 22-28, January.
    18. Sorensen, Paul & Church, Richard, 2010. "Integrating expected coverage and local reliability for emergency medical services location problems," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 8-18, March.
    19. Ibrahim Çapar & Sharif H Melouk & Burcu B Keskin, 2017. "Alternative metrics to measure EMS system performance," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(7), pages 792-808, July.
    20. Sun Hoon Kim & Young Hoon Lee, 2016. "Iterative optimization algorithm with parameter estimation for the ambulance location problem," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 362-382, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:207:y:2010:i:3:p:1293-1303. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.