Approximate dynamic programming for ambulance redeployment

Approximate dynamic programming for ambulance redeployment

0.00 Avg rating0 Votes
Article ID: iaor20104216
Volume: 22
Issue: 2
Start Page Number: 266
End Page Number: 281
Publication Date: Mar 2010
Journal: INFORMS Journal on Computing
Authors: , , ,
Keywords: vehicle routing & scheduling, location
Abstract:

We present an approximate dynamic programming approach for making ambulance redeployment decisions in an emergency medical service system. The primary decision is where we should redeploy idle ambulances so as to maximize the number of calls reached within a delay threshold. We begin by formulating this problem as a dynamic program. To deal with the high-dimensional and uncountable state space in the dynamic program, we construct approximations to the value function that are parameterized by a small number of parameters. We tune the parameters using simulated cost trajectories of the system. Computational experiments demonstrate the performance of the approach on emergency medical service systems in two metropolitan areas. We report practically significant improvements in performance relative to benchmark static policies.

Reviews

Required fields are marked *. Your email address will not be published.