3,302 research outputs found
An emergency vehicles allocation model for major industrial disasters
One of the main issues in the event of a major industrial disaster (fire, explosion or toxic gas dispersion) is to efficacy manage emergencies by considering both medical and logistics issues. From a logistics point of view the purpose of this work is to correctly address critical patients from the emergency site to the most suitable hospitals. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) Model is proposed, able to determine the optimal number and allocation of emergency vehicles involved in relief operations, in order to maximize the number of successfully treated injured patients. Moreover, a vehicles reallocation strategy has been developed which takes into account the evolution of the patients health conditions. Alternative scenarios have been tested considering a dynamic version of the Emergency Vehicles Allocation Problem, in which patient health conditions evolves during the rescue process. A company located in Italy has been considered as case-study in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology
Multi-community command and control systems in law enforcement: An introductory planning guide
A set of planning guidelines for multi-community command and control systems in law enforcement is presented. Essential characteristics and applications of these systems are outlined. Requirements analysis, system concept design, implementation planning, and performance and cost modeling are described and demonstrated with numerous examples. Program management techniques and joint powers agreements for multicommunity programs are discussed in detail. A description of a typical multi-community computer-aided dispatch system is appended
Optimising police dispatch for incident response in real-time
It is crucial that police forces operate in a cost efficient manner and, in the case of incident response, that the most efficient resources are allocated. The current procedure is that police response units are allocated manually by a dispatcher using a resource list and mapping software. The efficiency of this process can be improved by the use of integrated mathematical approaches embedded within an automatic framework, yielding the optimal selection framework developed in this paper. The framework combines mapping and routing algorithms, and a decision process to facilitate optimal officer selection for incident response. The decision process considers information such as quickest response time, predicted traffic conditions, driving qualifications, response unit availability and demand coverage. The selection framework has been tested and validated through simulation and has shown to increase the efficiency of response units through reduced response times, increased response unit availability, and greater demand coverage
Towards smart open dynamic fleets
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33509-4_32Nowadays, vehicles of modern fleets are endowed with advanced
devices that allow the operators of a control center to have global knowledge
about fleet status, including existing incidents. Fleet management systems support
real-time decision making at the control center so as to maximize fleet performâ
ance. In this paper, setting out from our experience in dynamic coordination of
fleet management systems, we focus on fleets that are open, dynamic and highly
autonomous. Furthermore, we propose how to cope with the scalability problem
as the number of vehicles grows. We present our proposed architecture for open
fleet management systems and use the case of taxi services as example of our
proposal.Work partially supported by Spanish Government through the projects iHAS (grant TIN2012-36586-C03) and SURF (grant TIN2015-65515-C4-X-R), the Autonomous Region of Madrid through grant S2013/ICE-3019 (âMOSI-AGIL-CMâ, cofunded by EU Structural Funds FSE and FEDER) and URJC-Santander (30VCPIGI15).Billhardt, H.; FernĂĄndez, A.; Lujak, M.; Ossowski, S.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Paz, JFD.; HernĂĄndez, JZ. (2016). Towards smart open dynamic fleets. En Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies. Springer. 410-424. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33509-4_32S41042
Optimization approaches to the ambulance dispatching and relocation problem
In the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) context, the decision-making process plays a very important role since some decisions highly impact patientsâ health. This thesis focuses on the operational level by solving the dispatching and relocation ambulance problems. Dispatching decisions assign ambulances to emergencies, and the relocation problem decides to which base ambulances should be (re)assigned. Two optimization approaches are proposed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the EMS response: a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and a pilot method heuristic. The aim is to maximize the systemâs coverage using a time-preparedness measure allowing relocations to any base.
Experiments are performed using EMS data from Lisbon, Portugal, where solving these problems is still a handmade task. Different ambulance types are considered, which should be used according to the severity of each emergency.
The proposed approaches are tested under different scenarios: varying the period size, varying the number of emergencies, and simulating a whole day. Furthermore, they are adapted to compare the proposed strategy with the current Portuguese EMS strategy, which dispatches the closest available ambulance for each emergency and always relocates ambulances to their home bases. Results highlight the potential of the mathematical model and of the proposed strategy to be applied in realtime contexts since a reduction of 10% is obtained in the average response time to emergencies in the simulation scenario. The heuristic should be used when more emergencies occur in the same time period since a solution can be obtained almost immediately in contrast to the MILP usage.
To help EMS managers in the decision-making process, we propose an ambulance management tool using Geographic Information Systems, which embeds the proposed approaches. It can be used in real-time or for simulation purposes. It incorporates a map visualization that analyzes ambulancesâ movements on the map and the emergenciesâ location
Exploring the drive-by sensing power of bus fleet through active scheduling
Vehicle-based mobile sensing (a.k.a drive-by sensing) is an important means
of surveying urban environment by leveraging the mobility of public or private
transport vehicles. Buses, for their extensive spatial coverage and reliable
operations, have received much attention in drive-by sensing. Existing studies
have focused on the assignment of sensors to a set of lines or buses with no
operational intervention, which is typically formulated as set covering or
subset selection problems. This paper aims to boost the sensing power of bus
fleets through active scheduling, by allowing instrumented buses to circulate
across multiple lines to deliver optimal sensing outcome. We consider a fleet
consisting of instrumented and normal buses, and jointly optimize sensor
assignment, bus dispatch, and intra- or inter-line relocations, with the
objectives of maximizing sensing quality and minimizing operational costs,
while serving all timetabled trips. By making general assumptions on the
sensing utility function, we formulate the problem as a nonlinear integer
program based on a time-expanded network. A batch scheduling algorithm is
developed following linearization techniques to solve the problem efficiently,
which is tested in a real-world case study in Chengdu, China. The results show
that the proposed scheme can improve the sensing objective by 12.0%-20.5%
(single-line scheduling) and 16.3%-32.1% (multi-line scheduling), respectively,
while managing to save operational costs by 1.0%. Importantly, to achieve the
same level of sensing quality, we found that the sensor investment can be
reduced by over 33% when considering active bus scheduling. Comprehensive
comparative and sensitivity analyses are presented to generate managerial
insights and recommendations for practice.Comment: 32 pages, 13 figures, 8 table
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