Optimally Allocating Ambulances in Delhi using Mutation based Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents a reliable and competent evolutionary-based approach for improving the response time of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) by efficiently allocating ambulances at the base stations. As the prime objective of EMS is to save people's lives by providing them with timely assistance, thus increasing the chances of a person's survivability, this paper has undertaken the problem of ambulance allocation. The work has been implemented using the proposed mutation-based Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm (mSFLA) to provide an optimal allocation plan. The authors have altered the basic SFLA using the concept of mutation to improve the quality of the solution obtained and avoid being trapped in local optima. Considering a set of assumptions, the new algorithm has been applied for allocating 50 ambulances among 11 base stations in Southern Delhi. The working environment of EMS, which includes stochastic requests, travel time, and dynamic traffic conditions, has been considered to attain accurate results. The work has been implemented in the MATLAB simulation environment to find an optimized allocation plan with a minimum average response time. The authors have reduced the average response time by 12.23% with the proposed algorithm. The paper also compares mSFLA, Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for the stated problem. The algorithms are compared in terms of objective value (average response time), convergence rate, and constancy repeatability to conclude that mSFLA performs better than the other two algorithms.