Demand Forecast and Multi-Objective Ambulance Allocation

This study considers the two-fold dynamic ambulance allocation problem, which includes forecasting the distribution of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) requesters and allocating ambulances dynamically according to the predicted distribution of requesters. EMSs demand distribution forecasting is based on on-record historical demands. Subsequently, a multi-objective ambulance allocation model (MOAAM) is solved by a mechanism called Jumping Particle Swarm Optimization (JPSO) according to the forecasted distribution of demands. Experiments were conducted using recorded historical data for EMS requesters in New Taipei City, Taiwan, for the years 2014 and 2015. EMS demand distribution for 2015 is forecasted according to the on-record historical demand of 2014. Ambulance allocation for 2015 is determined according to the anticipated demand distribution. The predicted demand distribution and ambulance allocation solved by JPSO are compared with historic data of 2015. The comparisons verify that the proposed methods yield lower forecasting error rates and better ambulance allocation than the actual one.