A two-stage approach for the emergency services coordination problem in a road accident

The coordination of emergency services in road accidents is essential to ensure a quick intervention in critical situations. The number and kind of resources assigned must be determined dynamically, as not all the accident variables are known when an alert is received. Moreover, vehicles and intervention units have to be assigned after the accident takes place. Thus, the decision making process has to be done within the intervention time window and response time becomes critical. This paper describes the major characteristics of a cluster first-route second optimization algorithm suggested to tackle the emergency services coordination problem in order to reduce their response time in critical situations. This algorithm combines heuristic methods and Constraint Satisfaction Problem techniques in a two-stage procedure: a first phase where the real geographic data is rearranged to ensure the time constraints fulfillment and a second one, which consists on available resources' allocation and optimal routes assignment.