Estudio de sistemas de emergencias pre-hospitalarias empleando sistemas de información geográficos

Abstract

This work proposes the study of pre-hospital emergency systems using the tools provided by geographic information systems. The current situation of the system is analyzed and several scenarios for relocating the existing ambulance stations and the inclusion of a new one are proposed. In all cases, the adopted performance criterion is the area of coverage for a certain response time to the first call. The emergency system of the Bahía Blanca city, a medium-sized city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, was used as a case study. The data registered in the service database, corresponding to one year of operation, were used. Results show that relocating the ambulance stations/vehicles allows improving the performance criterion at the cost of reducing the system robustness in the face of a second and third emergency call in high-demand areas.