 A multi-period and bi-objective approach for locating ambulances: a case study in Belo Horizonte, BrazilCharles Paulino de Oliveira, Elisangela Martins de Sá and Flávio Vinícius Cruzeiro Martins International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2026, vol. 53, issue 4, 502-521 Abstract: This study applies a covering facility location problem in the emergency medical service (EMS) of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. It is proposed a deterministic and a stochastic multi-period model, which allows ambulances to move among bases in different periods to raise the system coverage. The proposed models handle the decisions of base locations and ambulance allocation/relocation. This paper also proposes a bi-objective approach aiming to minimise the number of bases and maximise the coverage of demands, which is solved using the ϵ-constraint method. Results show that coverage levels increased when scenarios change from static to multi-period. Also, since the multi-period model solutions result in installing a larger number of bases, the bi-objective approach shows to be a powerful tool for the decision-maker to analyse the trade-off between the operational challenges of increasing the number of bases and the increase of coverage. Keywords: facility location; ambulance location; mathematical programming model; real-world application; Brazil. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijlsma:v:53:y:2026:i:4:p:502-521 Access Statistics for this article More articles in International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.