Understanding the role of geographical environments in emergency dispatches with GPS trajectories.

Emergency management attends to expedite the emergency response and mitigate the impact on human lives and the economy caused by emergency incidents. One of the primary tasks of emergency management is ensuring that emergency response teams arrive at the incident location within a specified time frame. Previous studies have focused on reducing response times by identifying optimal locations for emergency vehicles (EVs) and emergency departments, assigning EV to a call, designating the optimal dispatch routes, and giving priority to emergency vehicles at traffic lights (Chen et al., 2014; Panahi & Delavar, 2008). However, despite these efforts, many emergency vehicles still miss their target response time. A comprehensive analysis is lacking to evaluate geographical environmental variables contributing to unsuccessful and successful emergency dispatches. Exploring the relationship between the geographical environment and emergency dispatch to improve emergency response services in neighbourhoods, this study aimed to identify geographic environmental determinants that differentiate successful and unsuccessful dispatches: (1) road characteristics, (2) topology of street segments, (3) weather conditions, (4) land use, (5) time and (6) dispatch operations (e.g., number of dispatched vehicles). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]