Empirical Analysis of Ambulance Travel Times: The Case of Calgary Emergency Medical Services
Susan Budge, Armann Ingolfsson, Dawit Zerom
Management Science · 2010 · Volume 56 · Issue 4
Abstract
Using administrative data for high-priority calls in Calgary, Alberta, we estimate how ambulance travel times depend on distance. We find that a logarithmic transformation produces symmetric travel-time distributions with heavier tails than those of a normal distribution. Guided by nonparametric estimates of the median and coefficient of variation, we demonstrate that a previously proposed model for mean fire engine travel times is a valid and useful description of median ambulance travel times. We propose a new specification for the coefficient of variation, which decreases with distance. We illustrate how the resulting travel-time distribution model can be used to create probability-of-coverage maps for diagnosis and improvement of system performance.
Keywords
ambulance service, probability-of-coverage map, nonparametric, travel
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