Optimal service order for mass-casualty incident response

Behrooz Kamali, Douglas Bish and Roger Glick

European Journal of Operational Research, 2017, vol. 261, issue 1, 355-367

Abstract: In the aftermath of a mass-casualty incident, one of the first steps in the response is to triage the casualties. Triage systems categorize the casualties based on criticality, and then prioritize casualties for transfer to hospitals for further treatment. The prioritization is usually based on simply ordering the casualty types without considering the available resources to transport them and the scale of the disaster. These factors can significantly affect the outcome of the rescue efforts. In this research we study a mathematical model to incorporate the above mentioned factors in the triage process. We assume a disaster location with a set of casualties, categorized by criticality and care requirements, that must be transported to hospitals in the region using a fleet of available ambulances. The goal is to maximize the expected number of survivors. We analyze the structure of the optimal solution to this problem, and compare the performance of the model with the current practice and other related models in the literature.

Keywords: OR in disaster relief; Emergency management; Mass-casualty triage; Service order (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221717300826
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:261:y:2017:i:1:p:355-367

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2017.01.047

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().