Multi-coverage optimal location model for emergency medical service (EMS) facilities under various disaster scenarios: A case study of urban fluvial floods in the Minhang district of Shanghai, China

Emergency medical service (EMS) response is extremely critical for pre-hospital lifesaving when disaster events occur. However, disasters increase the difficulty of rescue and may significantly increase the total travel time between dispatch and arrival, thereby increasing the pressure on emergency facilities. Hence, facility location decisions play a crucial role in improving the efficiency of rescue and service capacity. In order to avoid the failure of EMS facilities during disasters and meet the multiple requirements of demand points, we propose a multi-coverage optimal location model for EMS facilities based on the results of disaster impact simulation and prediction. To verify this model, we explicitly simulated the impacts of fluvial flooding events using the 1-D-2-D coupled flood inundation model FloodMap. The simulation results suggested that even low-magnitude fluvial flood events resulted in a decrease in the EMS response area. The integration of the model results with a geographical-information-system (GIS) analysis indicated that the optimization of the EMS locations reduced the delay in emergency responses caused by disasters and significantly increased the number of rescued people and the coverage of demand points.