Mathematical Programming Guides Air-Ambulance Routing at Ornge

Timothy A. Carnes (), Shane G. Henderson (), David B. Shmoys (), Mahvareh Ahghari () and Russell D. MacDonald ()
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Timothy A. Carnes: Link Analytics, Atlanta, Georgia 30338
Shane G. Henderson: School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
David B. Shmoys: School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
Mahvareh Ahghari: Ornge, Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5H8, Canada
Russell D. MacDonald: Ornge, Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5H8, Canada; and Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Interfaces, 2013, vol. 43, issue 3, 232-239

Abstract: Ornge provides air-ambulance services to the province of Ontario. A major part of its services involves prescheduled transports between medical facilities. These transports almost exclusively require fixed-wing aircraft because of the distances involved and cost considerations. The requests are received in advance, scheduled overnight, and typically executed the following day. We describe our work in developing a planning tool that determines an assignment of requests to aircraft to minimize cost, subject to a range of complicating constraints. Ornge flight planners use the tool daily, resulting in substantial savings over the manual approach they used previously to develop schedules. We describe the problem, our formulation, its implementation, and the impact on operations at Ornge.

Keywords: set partitioning; transport medicine; dial-a-ride (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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