Patent ID: 6058370
Filing Date: 2000-05-02
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
A method of determining historical service demand for use in forecasting the future demand for ambulance services, based on dividing the week into scheduling increments, comprising:a) accumulating for an historically-significant period of time records of requests for service, said records including information on:1) the time at which the request for service was received, and2) the time at which service was completed;b) determining from the accumulated records the total number of requests for service received during each scheduling increment over the historical period;c) determining from the accumulated records the number of active calls at the time each request for service was received,d) for each scheduling increment during the week, determining for each level of active calls the number of times during the historical period that the number of active calls increased from that level;e) for each scheduling increment during the week, computing for each level of active calls the ratio of the number of times during the historical period that the number of active calls increased from that level to the total number of request for service received during the scheduling increment; andf) forming a matrix representing the ratios for each level of active calls and each scheduling increment.