Road safety and the urban emergency medical service (uEMS): Strategy station location

Abstract

This paper provides a methodology on how to contribute to road safety by improving the vehicle response of urban emergency medical services (uEMS) using road safety investments. The methodology embodies two steps. The first step includes a demand assessment through a model that calculates the frequency of urban emergency events and their priority in a spatial area per different population demographics and urban characteristics. These events are categorized by type, which we separated as road crashes, cardiac arrests and other emergency events that require the dispatch of an ambulance with a medical team. The second step proposes an optimization model developed to maximize the uEMS vehicle coverage, considering road crashes by locating ambulance stations in the urban area, giving priority to high-priority emergencies and strategically double-covering road crashes. The applicability and practical interest of the proposed models are proven by applying them to the real-world case of the metropolitan area of Porto, where data on the emergency service response, land use and population demographics are available. The final conclusions indicate that areas prone to high volumes of traffic and high speed roads lead to higher volumes of road crash emergencies, and stations should be located closer to high speed roads. Moreover, further investigations should entail micromanagement improvements to assist in road crashes.