Abstract: Ambulance services aim to maximise survival chances and improve patient outcomes following medical emergencies. Rather than focusing solely on response times or coverage, we propose a modelling approach to allocate different emergency response vehicle types to maximise patient outcomes within a heterogeneous population. Our key contribution involves developing a metaheuristic algorithm for finding better fleet allocations, used with a discrete-event simulation model featuring heterogeneous vehicles. A major innovation is numerically solving a system of equations to approximate vehicle utilisation, traditionally problematic since utilisation functions as both input and output of vehicle allocation decisions. The approach is informed by, and tested on, real-world data from Jakarta, Indonesia, to help decision makers understand ambulance fleet capacity needs and the impact of allocations on patient outcomes.
@article{palmer2025optimisation,
title = {On the Optimisation of Heterogeneous Ambulance Fleet Allocations},
author = {Palmer, Geraint and Tuson, Mark and Knight, Vincent A. and
Harper, Paul R. and Brice, Syaribah Noor and Smith, Leanne and
Gartner, Daniel},
journal = {{IMA} Journal of Management Mathematics},
volume = {36},
number = {4},
pages = {691},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1093/imaman/dpae027},
url = {https://academic.oup.com/imaman/article/36/4/691/8190187},
}