Title: A multi-period and bi-objective approach for locating ambulances: a case study in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Authors: Charles Paulino de Oliveira; Elisangela Martins de Sá; Flávio Vinícius Cruzeiro Martins

Addresses: Federal Center of Technological Education of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 30510-000, Brazil ' Applied Social Sciences Department, Federal Center of Technological Education of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 30510-000, Brazil ' Computer Department, Federal Center of Technological Education of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 30510-000, Brazil

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.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2026.152870

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2026 Vol.53 No.4, pp.502 - 521

Received: 30 Sep 2022
Accepted: 16 Oct 2022
Published online: 14 Apr 2026 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article