| dc.description.abstract | A good deal of time when significant disasters happen, there is a considerable number of problems to be solved in regards to facing disasters and handling severe casualties. For example, when serious disasters occur, they can not only endanger the safety of people′s lives but also cause significant property damage. However, the response time of rescue and the evacuation speed almost always affect the extent of the damage deeply. Emergency medical services (EMS) is the mechanism to make sure patients receive urgent medical service, out-of-hospital treatment and transport to appropriate medical facilities. The most important decision that the leader of emergency medical technicians make is providing ambulances in the shortest possible time as a response to the emergency calls. Once significant disasters or serious accidents occur, the pressing medical care of mass casualty can be generated, and how to immediately respond to the emergency calls is an issue worthy of studying. To date, the procedure for deciding which hospital the patient in emergency should be transported to has not been very clear. When serious accidents happen, Ministry of Health and Welfare initiates regional emergency medical operation center (REMOC), and ambulance dispatchers determine the dispatches and the routes of ambulances by calling hospitals to see if there are available resources to accept patients or transporting patients directly to the nearest hospital instead of following a triage system. In other words, they lack an overall systematic plan, and may not make the best decision of ambulance dispatch. This might lead to adverse consequences like delay in sending patients to hospitals. Therefore, this study aims to optimize the system and develop a model for ambulance dispatching. It hopes to effectively assist ambulance dispatchers in transporting patients to the appropriate hospitals within the shortest time and enhance the efficiency of saving individuals.
In this study, a model for ambulance dispatching is developed. The technique of timespace network flow and mathematical programming method are utilized to formulate the potential movements of ambulances among all areas in disasters as well as hospitals in the dimensions of time and space. The C++ computer language, coupled with the CPLEX mathematical programming software, are employed to solve the problem. To evaluate the practicability of the model, the related data of Taoyuan City is taken as the example and performed in this study. Different parameters are also conducted in sensitivity analysis and program analysis. The results suggest that the proposed model and solution algorithm can be useful for transporting patients in emergencies instantly to appropriate medical facilities as well as a system for ambulance dispatchers to follow and keep individuals safe. | en_US |