News
STW grant for Rob van der Mei
VU professor Rob van der Mei has received a 740,000 Euro subsidy from the STW technology foundation for the project “From Reactive to Proactive Project Planning and Emergency Services” [REPRO]. The project aims to improve the planning of ambulance rides, sometimes literally a matter of life or death.
VU professor Rob van der Mei has received a 740,000 Euro subsidy from the STW technology foundation for the project "From Reactive to Proactive Project Planning and Emergency Services" [REPRO]. The project aims to improve the planning of ambulance rides, sometimes literally a matter of life or death.
The total budget of the project is 1.4 million Euros, for which three PhD students and one scientific programmer will be appointed. REPRO is a collaboration of professor Van der Mei [CWI, VU] and professor K.I. Aardal [DIAM, Delft University of Technology] and will be launched in early 2012.
Background
In life threatening emergencies where every second counts, the on time arrival of an ambulance can mean the difference between life and death. For emergencies the following quality requirements are made in practice: in 95% of the cases, the arrival time of an ambulance is not allowed to be longer than 15 minutes.
To achieve such short arrival times at affordable rates a sophisticated planning of necessary ambulance rides is necessary. In realizing an efficient planning of ambulance rides many questions play a role, both at a tactical, strategic, as at an operational level. Typical questions are: In which way can the number of calls, depending on time and location, be predicted accurately? How can we properly anticipate and respond to peaks in demand for ambulances? How many pitches for ambulances do we need and what are the optimal locations? How can we put together an appropriate planning of personnel so that all hard and soft constraints are met?
Scientific challenge
A strongly complicating factor in solving these kinds of planning issues is the high degree of uncertainty inherent in virtually all facets of the ambulance service process. The problem is that the existing planning methods usually assume that the demand for and availability of ambulances are known in advance, but those methods are usually very sensitive to changes in these input parameters. It is the underestimation of these uncertainties that leads to inefficient and therefore expensive, planning of ambulance rides. To solve this problem groundbreaking research is needed that focuses on the development of new, scalable, planning methods which are robust to changes in environmental factors [by explicitly taking into account the uncertainty factor in the ambulance service process, both in real time and in non real time].
Expected results
The project will lead to new, robust and scalable methods for: (1) determining appropriate locations and the required number of ambulance couples [ambulance vehicles, drivers and medical staff] and flexible planning of personnel, meeting all kinds of practical constraints, and (2) determining efficient and dynamic relocation strategies so that at any moment optimal "coverage" of the service area is realized. The results will be implemented in a prototype modular visualization and planning tool, which will be used by planners of personnel and emergency room personnel, to support the operational processes.
