Ambulance redeployment is the practice of repositioning ambulance fleets in real time in an attempt to reduce response times to future calls. When redeployment decisions are based on real-time information on the status and location of ambulances, the process is called system-status management. An important performance measure is the long-run fraction of calls with response times over some time threshold. We construct a lower bound on this performance measure that holds for nearly any ambulance redeployment policy through comparison methods for queues. The computation of the bound involves solving a number of integer programs and then simulating a multiserver queue. This work originated when one of the authors was asked to analyze a response to a request-for-proposals RFP for ambulance services in a county in North America.
['Matthew S. Maxwell', 'Eric Cao Ni', 'Chaoxu Tong', 'Shane G. Henderson', 'Huseyin Topaloglu', 'Susan R. Hunter']
A Bound on the Performance of an Optimal Ambulance Redeployment Policy