The city of Las Americas is dissatisfied with the private ambulance services. The city decided to purchase an ambulance operating contract and started operation of a municipal emergency medical service (EMS) department. It intends to provide the most advanced level of care from freestanding EMS stations. Your team is hired by the city to determine the number and location of vehicles to all segments of the population at a reasonable cost. The city is divided into 40 districts. The average time it takes an emergency vehicle to travel from each district to another is available in the spreadsheet.

The city council asked the following series of questions.

The Federal Emergency Medical Services Act recommends that an urban EMS system reach 95 percent of all calls within 10 minutes. Find the minimum number of EMS sites so that all districts are within 10 minutes of an emergency vehicle. Each EMS station, including an ambulance, costs $850,000 per year.

Q1: What is the overall annual operating cost to satisfy the Federal requirement?

One councilwoman argues that there can be multiple incidents at the same time in nearby areas, therefore your answer above based on the federal minimum requirement is not adequate. She argues that all districts have to be within 10 minutes from at least two, preferably more EMS stations. Clearly, if a district is within 10 minutes from multiple EMS stations, residents will feel safer. On the other hand, the overall cost may increase, and possibly the locations of EMS stations will be different. The councilwoman asked your team to study how the cost will increase as you increase the number of times (twice, three times, and four times) each district is covered.

Q2: What is the optimal solution (min cost and location of EMS) when you cover each district twice, three times, and four times? A graph would be nice.

Mayor told in a meeting that the budget is so tight that the city can't afford to have all the EMS stations that you recommended just above. He said he wants to cover each district three times, but the city's budget is $250,000 less than the cost your solution requires. So the city can only afford to have one less EMS station than your recommendation. He also indicated that some districts are more populated than others. It doesn't seem sensible to consider just whether a district is within 10 minutes or not. He argues you should rather incorporate the population in each district. The population data is available in the spreadsheet

Q3: Where should the city locate EMS stations, given one less EMS station, to maximize #people covered, and ensuring that those who are covered are covered by at least 3 EMS stations?

Your Q3 results created a huge controversy because your recommendation indicated some districts are not covered at all or covered by just one EMS station, while other districts are covered many times.

Q4: How do you address this issue? Here I expect different teams to come up with different solutions/recommendations.

One of your team members spoke with LAFD chief, and the chief said, "You know, we have 3 fire stations in your area that have some extra space. You could utilize our facility if that helps." If you use an existing fire station as your EMS station, the annual operating cost is much less - $500,000 per year per station instead of 850,000. The fire stations that have extra space are in districts 18, 23, and 32.

Q5: What is your recommendation now? What is the cost-saving compared to Q4, if any? Can the city now afford to have the one EMS that you gave up in Q3, to increase coverage?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

To tackle these questions lets break down each one Q1 Overall Annual Operating Cost to Satisfy the F... View the full answer