Ambulance Dispatch Scheme based on Maximum Flow Minimum Cost models

Abstract

This paper designs an ambulance dispatch scheme capable of efficiently coping with demand surge coming from catastrophic situations, taking advantage of the minimum cost maximum flow algorithm. In addition to basic links connections from the source to the sink, links from patients to ambulances are created according to whether the medical equipment in the rescue vehicle fits the patient. The link cost is set to the product of the criticality level of the patient and the distance to the vehicle. The performance measurement result, obtained by a prototype implementation, shows that the proposed scheme can reduce the response time for the patient of highest criticality by up to 33 %, compared with the case only the distance factor is taken into account.