Title: Fire station location analysis in a metropolitan area

Authors: Mehmet Savsar

Addresses: College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, Safat 13060, Kuwait

Abstract: Facility location problem involves locating a facility to optimise some performance measure. Location of a public facility significantly affects its service quality. Therefore, it is essential to give special consideration in selecting a proper location for a facility that will be used to meet the community needs in metropolitan areas. Locating a fire station is an example for a service facility location for a community. The main objective in locating a fire station is to minimise the response time, which is the time duration between receiving a call and reaching the place of incident. In metropolitan areas, fire vehicles need to cross highways and other traffic obstacles through some obstacle-overcoming points which delay the response time. Therefore, in the analysis of fire station locations, obstacles have to be taken into consideration. In this paper, fire station location problem is analysed. Models are developed for the fire station location problems, which involve obstacles and obstacle-overcoming points. Particular case problems are analysed and the results are presented.

Keywords: location analysis; fire stations; response time; fire fighting systems; fire engines; fire engine delays; fire station location; metropolitan areas; facility location; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2014.060134

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2014 Vol.16 No.3, pp.365 - 381

Published online: 07 Jun 2014 *

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