A dynamic ambulance routing model with multiple response

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A dynamic ambulance routing model with multiple response

Yoon, Soovin / Albert, Laura A.

Highlights • We study how to route ambulances to patients. • There are two types of ambulances that provide different levels of patient care. • At the time of dispatch, there is uncertainty regarding which type of ambulance a patient needs. • We study when to send a single ambulance and when to send multiple ambulances. • The model can inform decisions in tiered emergency medical services.

Abstract Emergency medical services systems equipped with both advanced and basic emergency vehicles often dispatch both types of vehicles to one call, which is called multiple response. Multiple response allows for faster response times at the potential cost of making more vehicles unavailable for service. To evaluate the value of multiple response, we formulate a Markov decision process model that dynamically determines which type of vehicle(s) to dispatch based. We show that the optimal policies are class separable. Numerical experiments demonstrate that multiple response can significantly improve system performance when patients health needs are uncertain.