Gotham City Ambulance Services (GCAS) owns eight ambulances. On average, emergencies are reported to GCAS every 15 minutes (with a coefficient of variation of 1, no seasonality exists). If GCAS has available ambulances, it immediately dispatches one. If there are no ambulances available, the incident is served by the emergency services at a neighboring community. You can assume that in the neighboring community, there is always an ambulance available. On average, an ambulance and its crew are engaged for 1.5 hours (with a coefficient of variation of 1.5) on every call. GCAS operates 24 hours a day.
a. What fraction of the emergencies reported to GCAS are handled by the emergency services at the neighboring community?
b. How many emergencies are served by GCAS during an average 24-hour day?
c. GCAS updated the operating procedures for its staff. This led to a reduction in the coefficient of variation of the time spent on each trip by its staff from 1.5 to 1.25. How will this training program affect the number of emergencies attended to by the GCAS?
d. New regulations require that every emergency service respond to at least 95 percent of all incidents reported in its area of service. Does GCAS need to buy more ambulances to meet this requirement? If yes, how many ambulances will be required? (Assume that the mean time spent on each trip cannot be changed.)