![]() ![]() It is not just the air ambulance organisation that is considering repositioning its emergency vehicles: Aardal and her colleagues have also been asked to extend the research into the positioning of land ambulances. If the emergency services had to reach their destination within half an hour, then the number of helicopter bases would have to be doubled. However, reaching everyone in Norway would require nine bases. ![]() From their research, it turned out that four helicopters are enough to reach ninety per cent of all Norwegians within three-quarters of an hour. Using optimization models and algorithms (see the inset for an example), they were able to determine which of the numerous options would give optimum cover. Every one of those squares – almost 400,000 of them – could potentially contain one helicopter base. All these variables affect the positioning of the helicopters.”Īardal and her colleagues solved the ‘puzzle’ by dividing up the whole of Norway into a grid with squares, each one square kilometre in size. There are also certain places that you can rule out having a helicopter platform – the centre of Oslo, for example. Even though you want to reach every corner of the country, at the same time you need to have additional ambulance capacity in the more densely populated areas. “We knew, for example, the radius within which the helicopters operate and the places where accidents had occurred in recent years. “To do so, we used different types of data”, she says. Nevertheless, the Norwegians are not always successful in reaching an accident within 45 minutes, the target set by the government.Īt the request of the Norwegian air ambulance organisation, Aardal and her colleagues, Theresia van Essen and Pieter van den Berg, investigated whether this could be arranged better. Helicopters are often the fastest way of reaching the scene of an accident in such cases. On top of that, the Norwegians love their outdoor sports, which of course entails a degree of risk at less accessible locations, such as ski slopes. That is hardly surprising, given that Norway is very sparsely populated and also has severe winters that make the roads almost impassable. Whereas the four emergency helicopters in the Netherlands are called out ‘only’ six times a day, they are used much more frequently in Norway. With the help of mathematics, I can work out what the smartest combination is, so that ambulances are able to get quickly to where they are needed.”Īardal recently investigated this for emergency helicopters in her homeland Norway. Suppose you have ten ambulances – that means there is an almost infinite number of combinations of positions. After all, you can position ambulances more or less anywhere. “I look for the very best solution among an astronomical number of options. She is a professor at TU Delft since 2008, and specializes in optimization. It is therefore of the utmost importance that ambulances and emergency helicopters are positioned strategically, in a way that minimizes the time needed to reach victims.īut how do you position vehicles strategically? It’s not that simple, as Karen Aardal knows from experience. Victims then need rapid assistance, because sometimes a few minutes can make the difference between life and death. It could be someone falling from a kitchen stepladder, colliding with a lamp post, or having a stroke. Every day, there are several serious accidents in the Netherlands. ![]()
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