The relocation of ambulance stations: A successful case study

Urban ambulance stations represent substantial investments in physical facilities and hence relocation decisions are long term strategic in nature and occur very infrequently. The problem of finding locations for facilities typically leads to a large scale integer programming problem. If there is also a choice as to the staging of these over time the problem becomes even larger. However, in this work it was found that by frequently discussing the problem with management and adapting the problem formulation to their needs it decomposed naturally into a number of sub-problems which were much easier to solve, and which were much more intelligible to management. As a result the recommendations of the study were accepted and are in the process of being implemented.