Title: A contribution for integrating dispatching and covering in the emergency vehicles management services

Authors: Sarah Ibri; Mustapha Nourelfath; Habiba Drias

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT), Interuniversity Research Center on Enterprise Networks, Université Laval Quebec (Qc.), G1K 7P4, Canada ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT), Interuniversity Research Center on Enterprise Networks, Université Laval Quebec (Qc.), G1K 7P4, Canada ' Computer Science Department, University of Sciences and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB), BP 32 El Alia Bab Ezzouar, Alger 16111, Algeria

Abstract: In the vehicle management systems, two important issues have to be considered by managers: the dispatching problem with the aim of minimising the response time for current emergency calls; and the covering problem with the objective of keeping proper coverage to satisfy future calls in best times. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value, in terms of service quality, of integrating the dispatching and covering problems in the same model. A heuristic algorithm, combining ant optimisation and tabu search is used as a solution approach and is included in a discrete event simulator that simulate the working of the system in real time. Several numerical examples are used to compare the integrated approach and the non-integrated one.

Keywords: emergency vehicles management; emergency management; vehicle dispatching; response time; emergency calls; vehicle coverage; ant colony optimisation; ACO; tabu search; real time simulation; discrete event simulation; service quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2013.053533

International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2013 Vol.5 No.2, pp.121 - 136

Published online: 28 Apr 2014 *

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