Comparison of static ambulance location models

Over the years, several ambulance location models have been discussed in the literature. Most of these models have been further developed to take more complicated situations into account. However, the existing standard models have never been compared computationally according to the criteria used in practice. In this paper, we compare several ambulance location models on coverage and response time criteria. In addition to four standard ambulance location models from the literature, we also present two models that focus on average and expected response times. The computational results show that the Maximum Expected Covering Location Problem (MEXCLP) and the Expected Response Time Model (ERTM) perform the best over all considered criteria. However, as the computation times for ERTM are long, we advice to use the MEXCLP except when response times are more important than coverage.

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