Redesign of primary response areas for county ambulance services

This paper describes a modeling approach used to redesign primary response areas (sectors) for an existing county ambulance service. The model employs multicriteria analysis of the problem including goals to minimize and balance travel times and balance workloads among ambulance service units. The model is quite flexible in that optimal designs can be made subject to budgetary and personnel constraints and sector continuousness is maintained. Given inputs such as the location of the ambulance bases and demographic information, the model generates efficient and equitable designs. The model is solved using a modified multicriteria gradient search technique for nonlinear models. The sensitivity of the model to reordering planning priorities is also evaluated.