Ambulance service resource planning for extreme temperatures: Analysis of ambulance 999 calls during episodes of extreme temperature in London, UK

Abstract

The association between episodes of extreme temperature and ambulance 999 calls has not yet been properly quantified. In this study we propose a statistical physics-based method to estimate the true mean number of ambulance 999 calls during episodes of extreme temperatures. Simple arithmetic mean overestimates the true number of calls during such episodes. Specifically, we apply the physics-based framework of nonextensive statistical mechanics (NESM) for estimating the probability distribution of extreme events to model the positive daily variation of ambulance calls. In addition, we combine NESM with the partitioned multiobjective method (PMRM) to determine the true mean of the positive daily difference of calls during periods of extreme temperature. We show that the use of the standard mean overestimates the true mean number of ambulance calls during episodes of extreme temperature. It is important to correctly estimate the mean value of ambulance 999 calls during such episodes in order for the ambulance service to efficiently manage their resources.