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Forecasting daily emergency ambulance service demand using biometeorological indexes

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Abstract

This study aims to study the effectiveness of using biometeorological indexes in the development of a daily emergency ambulance service demand forecast system for Taipei City, Taiwan, compared to typical weather factors. Around 370,000 emergency ambulance service patient records were aggregated into a daily emergency ambulance service demand time series as the study’s dependent variable. To assess the effectiveness of biometeorological indexes in making a 1 to 7-day forecast of daily emergency ambulance service demand, five forecast models were developed to make the comparison. The model with average temperature as the only predictor performed the best consistently from 1 to 7-day forecasts. The models with net effective temperature and apparent temperature as their only predictors ranked second and third, respectively. It is surprising that the model with both average temperature and relative humidity as predictors only ranked fourth. The unexpected outperformance of average temperature over net effective temperature and apparent temperature in forecasting daily emergency ambulance service demand suggested the need to develop updated locational-specific biometeorological indexes so that the benefit of the indexes can be fully utilized. Although adopting popular biometeorological indexes that are already available would be cheap and convenient, the benefit from these general indexes may not be guaranteed.

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Data Availability

The datasets used in the current study are not publicly available because they belong to the correspondinggovernmental departments. Readers who are interested in the datasets should make a request directly to theTaipei City Fire Department and the Central Weather Bureau.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Taipei City Fire Department for access to the data records used in the present study.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 108–2410-H-110–069-MY2) and the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), Taiwan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ho Ting Wong

  2. Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

    Ho Ting Wong

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  1. Ho Ting Wong
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Correspondence to Ho Ting Wong.

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Ethics approval

This study only analyzed anonymous emergency ambulance service usage records, with no direct or indirect patient contact. The project has been certified for exemption from the Human Research Ethics Committee at National Cheng Kung University (No. 108–298).

Conflict of interest

The author declares no competing interests.

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 22.2 KB)

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Cite this article

Wong, H.T. Forecasting daily emergency ambulance service demand using biometeorological indexes. Int J Biometeorol 67, 565–572 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-023-02435-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-023-02435-1

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