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Coordinating the Emergency Response of Ambulances to Multiple Mass Casualty Incidents using an Optimization-based Approach

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Advances in Optimization and Decision Science for Society, Services and Enterprises

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Abstract

During the emergency response to multiple mass casualty incidents (MCIs), a number of coordination (allocation) decisions need to be made in a timely manner. This paper reports on an optimization-based approach that has been developed to solve the ambulance-to-casualty and casualty-to-hospital allocation problems. A number of constraints are taken into consideration such as the number of ambulances and hospitals, along with the capacity of hospitals. Within the approach, the road network of the geographical area under consideration is modelled realistically. Further, the day of the week and the time of day at which multiple MCIs occur are considered as factors influencing the speed of the ambulances. The approach includes a Neighborhood Search Algorithm that has been developed and used to obtain solutions to a multiple MCI case study involving a number of scenarios.

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Correspondence to Haya Aldossary .

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Aldossary, H., Coates, G. (2019). Coordinating the Emergency Response of Ambulances to Multiple Mass Casualty Incidents using an Optimization-based Approach. In: Paolucci, M., Sciomachen, A., Uberti, P. (eds) Advances in Optimization and Decision Science for Society, Services and Enterprises. AIRO Springer Series, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34960-8_15

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