Locating Emergency Services with Different Priorities: The Priority Queuing Covering Location Problem

31 Pages Posted: 11 Jun 2008

See all articles by Francisco Silva

Francisco Silva

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences

Daniel Serra

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences

Date Written: May 2008

Abstract

Previous covering models for emergency service consider all the calls to be of the same importance and impose the same waiting time constraints independently of the service's priority. This type of constraint is clearly inappropriate in many contexts. For example, in urban medical emergency services, calls that involve danger to human life deserve higher priority over calls for more routine incidents. A realistic model in such a context should allow prioritizing the calls for service.

In this paper a covering model which considers different priority levels is formulated and solved. The model heritages its formulation from previous research on Maximum Coverage Models and incorporates results from Queuing Theory, in particular Priority Queuing. The additional complexity incorporated in the model justifies the use of a heuristic procedure.

Keywords: Location, health services, queuing, heuristics

JEL Classification: C61, L80

Suggested Citation

Silva, Francisco and Serra, Daniel, Locating Emergency Services with Different Priorities: The Priority Queuing Covering Location Problem (May 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1143278 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1143278

Francisco Silva

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences ( email )

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
Barcelona, 08005
Spain
(34) 93 542 26 87 (Phone)
(34) 93 542 17 46 (Fax)

Daniel Serra (Contact Author)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences ( email )

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
Barcelona, 08005
Spain
(34) 93 542 16 66 (Phone)
(34) 93 542 17 46 (Fax)

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