Solving the Dynamic Ambulance Relocation and Dispatching Problem Using a Novel Metaheuristic

Abstract

Proper deployment and a good management of emergency vehicles leads to shorter response times to an emergency call and thus reduces suffering, mortality and adverse health consequences for patients. In this context, we proposed a dynamic management of emergency vehicles in Morocco through the SOS accident system. Indeed, decision-making in these emergency situations remains a difficult task, given the number of variables that come into play on the one hand and the dynamism and unpredictability of some of them on the other. The general field in which the present project falls is in Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), which involves building routes at minimum cost so that vehicles can visit exactly once each customer who has been geographically distributed. We are going to be more particularly interested in a management of ambulances in real time since it will be done on the basis of information which will become accessible over time, which leads to the resolution of the problem of the dynamic elaboration of vehicle routes with time window (DVRPTW). To carry out the current project, we first developed a mathematical model of the response time of emergency vehicles, and calculated the travel time of the vehicles. Then, we used a novel metaheuristic based on Passing Vehicle Search and Tabu search algorithm for the optimization part, which allowed us to take into account most of the constraints that appear in the practice and which constrain emergency vehicles during their daily missions.