Models for the location of emergency facilities

The location of emergency service facilities such as ambulance and fire stations are a major concern and challenge for modern city planners. ln addition to the challenge of effectively meeting the service demands, managers of service facilities need to deal with budget cuts as well as the ever increasing volume of data and information made available by modem technology. The location problems, which arise in emergency services, can be broadly classified into three categories namely strategic, tactical and operationaL Strategic problems involve the location of fixed facilities for example hospitals, emergency centers, etc. Tactical problems relate to the location and relocation of emergency vehicles at any point in time. Operational problems are concerned with procedures to be followed by staff (paramedical) when calls are received. Our concern here is with the strategic and tactical categories. The optimization problems that arise are computationally difficult and complex. This paper discusses a number of models for this difficult class of problems. Dominance concepts are introduced for problem size reduction.