Emergency Medical Services Performance Under Dynamic Ambulance Redeployment

• Author / Creator

  Alanis, Ramon

• We present three articles written to satisfy the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in Operations
  and Information Systems: The first is focused on the use of a bidimensional Markov
  model to compute the expected performance of an ambulance system using dynamic ambulance
  repositioning based on the use of a compliance table. The model is validated against
  a detailed discrete event simulation model, and we show that the ranking of the results obtained
  from multiple compliance tables is highly correlated with the ranking obtained from
  the discrete simulation model. The second paper deals with the problem of finding optimal
  or near-optimal compliance tables for an ambulance system. We propose a framework to
  classify optimization models and we use it to put the two models developed into context.
  The first model is an integer programming formulation that assumes the ambulances are
  always in compliance, while imposing constraints on the ambulance repositioning required.
  The second model takes the bidimensional Markov model and uses it in a heuristic search
  to find near-optimal compliance tables.
  The final paper, although not directly related to ambulance operation, resulted from the
  implementation of a discrete event simulation of an ambulance system. In this paper we
  consider pre-computed routing information from any node to any other node in a road
  network. We compress it by taking advantage of the structural properties of the information
  and by transforming the problem into a traveling salesman problem which can be solved
  either to optimality via a solver or approximately via an insertion heuristic.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • System status management
  • Repositioning
  • Health care
  • Fleet management
  • Ambulance service

• Graduation date

  Fall 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3MT13

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.