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Technical Note—Approximating Vehicle Dispatch Probabilities for Emergency Service Systems with Location-Specific Service Times and Multiple Units per Location

School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2R6
School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2R6
Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey
sbudge{at}ualberta.ca
armann.ingolfsson{at}ualberta.ca
erhan.erkut{at}ozyegin.edu.tr

To calculate many of the important performance measures for an emergency response system, one requires knowledge of the probability that a particular server will respond to an incoming call at a particular location. Estimating these "dispatch probabilities" is complicated by four important characteristics of emergency service systems. We discuss these characteristics and extend previous approximation methods for calculating dispatch probabilities to account for the possibilities of workload variation by station, multiple vehicles per station, call- and station-dependent service times, and server cooperation and dependence.

Subject classifications: health care; ambulance service; queues; approximations.
History: Received February 2005; revision received May 2007; accepted June 2007.