This paper addresses the problem of scheduling ambulance crews in order to maximize the coverage throughout a planning horizon. The problem includes the subproblem of locating ambulances to maximize expected coverage with probabilistic response times, for which a tabu search algorithm is developed. The proposed tabu search algorithm is empirically shown to outperform previous approaches for this subproblem. Two integer programming models which use the output of the tabu search algorithm are constructed for the main problem. Computational experiments with real data are conducted. A comparison of the results of the models is presented.
In REF for example, the authors address the problem of allocating ambulances to stations which are distributed throughout a geographical region, aimed to maximize the expected coverage in overall.
Scheduling ambulance crews for maximum coverage
Journal of the Operational Research Society
Computer Science