An Efficient Exact Hypercube Model with Fully Dedicated Servers

Caio Vitor Beojone (), Regiane Máximo de Souza () and Ana Paula Iannoni ()
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Caio Vitor Beojone: Department of Production Engineering, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Bauru 17033-360, Brazil;
Regiane Máximo de Souza: Department of Production Engineering, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Bauru 17033-360, Brazil;
Ana Paula Iannoni: Laboratoire Genie Industriel, Ecole Centrale Paris, Chatenay Malabry 92295, France; Department of Production Engineering, São Carlos Federal University (UFSCar), São Carlos, 13565-905, Brazil

Transportation Science, 2021, vol. 55, issue 1, 222-237

Abstract: The hypercube model is a useful descriptive tool to evaluate emergency services such as firefighters, police, and emergency medical services where geographically distributed vehicles and personnel serve users in emergencies. This study proposes an extension of the hypercube model to represent a dispatch policy in which advanced equipped servers serve solely life-threatening calls (called dedicated servers). The proposed approach is applied to two case studies of public medical emergency services in two different cities in Brazil and validated with discrete-event simulations. The computational experiments show the proposed model as more sensitive to respond to more life-threatening requests than other hypercube models in the literature, serving more of these requests under increased demand. In addition, to reduce the number of equilibrium equations and, consequently, the computational effort of the hypercube model, an aggregate model is shown based on the grouping of homogeneous servers located in the same station. The aggregation policy does not generate additional losses in the accuracy of the model, as shown through several experiments.

Keywords: emergency medical services; queueing theory; aggregation of states; distinct servers; probabilistic location model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:55:y:2021:i:1:p:222-237

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