Minimization of Emergency Response Time by Incorporating Aerial Transportation

In this thesis, we deal with two different real-life medical emergency service problems. In these problems, we consider a city in which the locations of all the hospitals, medical service centers, and the other emergency care centers are known. In both problems the emergency services are deployed using aerial and ground vehicles for moving towards patients in their locations after receiving a call, performing the initial emergency medical care, and transporting the patients to the hospitals or other medical care facilities. For this reason, the accidents or demands are classified into two types the severity accidents which need aerial vehicles and normal accidents which are operated by ground vehicles. According to the average number of the accidents in each location (node) and the severity of the accident, a weight is assigned to each node. In the first problem, we assume that the ground emergency services are optimal and we just deal with assigning a given number of the aerial vehicles to the hospitals or the medical care centers for the severity accidents or emergency medical demands in a way that the total response time by the aerial vehicles is minimized. In another words, this type of the demands for ground and aerial services are different in this type of the problem. In the second problem, we are dealing with both ground and aerial medical services together and at the same time. As the number of the accidents or the demands for both ground and aerial services are known and separate. In this type of the problem we are aiming to assign a given number of the aerial and ground vehicles to the hospitals or the medical care centers in a way that the total response time by all the aerial and ground vehicles is minimized.