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Abstract
Our research focuses on assisting current operations of a
public safety Emergency Response System (ERS) in a large
city in Mexico to achieve the international ideal response
time of three minutes maximum based on allocating the
optimum number of police patrols. We believe that
improvements in patrol response times will strongly
improve statistics in the crime prevention and control as
well as in the apprehension of presumable delinquents. The
city is composed by eight police districts and this research
integrates an additional district to four previously evaluated.
In this research we first characterized the demand for service
and processes linked to the attention of the call and patrol
utilization. Next, we built a stochastic simulation model to
reproduce current operating conditions to validate its
behavior. Ultimately, we identified the optimum number of
police patrols required to be allocated as back up inventory
in each police quadrant within all districts.
Keywords
Patrol Allocation; Emergency Response Systems; Public Safety
Introduction
Even though public safety gradual improvements
have been reported in the last two years, there still are
alarming crime statistics in multiple regions in Mexico.
Multiple global factors that require urgent
international cooperation among governments seem to
be influencing this social condition. However, society
must claim its fundamental right to have a safe
environment and actively participate in shaping it and
peacefully defending it.
Attaining and preserving the public safety and wellbeing of society is an imperative function conducted
by ERS (Zaki, Cheng, and Parker, 1997; Zhang and
Brown, 2013). However, this function needs to be
fulfilled offering acceptable service levels that satisfy
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Literature Review
The problem of identifying the optimum allocation of
personnel and equipment capable of minimizing the
response time to or under a specific value is well
defined (Zaki el al., 1997). The disciplines of
Operations Research and Management Sciences have
traditionally contributed since the 1960s with
prescriptive models supporting the decision making
process related to improving the efficiency of
emergency response systems (DAmico et al., 2002;
Green and Kolesar, 2004). However, Green and
Kolesar (2004) identify new challenges to generate
new operating strategies that may be useful in
catastrophic events such as the 9/11 in N.Y. city. The
traditional methodologies often used to address
solutions to ERS performance include queuing models
(Green and Kolesar, 2004), shortest path algorithm
(Adler et al., 2013), hypercube model (DAmico et al.,
2002; Takeda et al., 2007), and stochastic simulation
(Zaki et al., 1997; Brooks et al., 2011; Zhang and Brown,
2013, 2014; Wu et al., 2014). The standardized
nomenclature to identify main activities within the
ERS process has been presented in the literature
(Maxfield, 1982; Zaki et al., 1997; and Green and
Kolesar, 2004).
Methodology and Case Study
Our research integrates results of the 5th police district
to the results of four districts previously evaluated.
Typically, police districts are divided into four
quadrants, and every quadrant is divided into four
patrolling zones. However, sometimes districts of
relative larger size are divided into five quadrants. The
ideal patrolling strategy followed by the citys ERS
allocates one patrol for every patrolling zone.
Nevertheless, due to insufficient availability of
resources this allocating strategy is only met 70% to
85% of the time on average. The simulation approach
models individual police quadrants based on
probability distributions of the demand for service and
the service processes. On the other hand, due to the
page limit of this article, results are presented by
police district reflecting quadrants averages.
This research considers two scenarios identified as BPActual and RT3M. The first scenario, BP-Actual,
models actual operations based on the idealized
concept that every patrolling zone has a dedicated
patrol (Basic Proposal). The second scenario, RT3M,
considers optimized and realistic dispatch and
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Parameter
Dka
Interarrival
Time
Response
Time
Patrol Busy
Time at Lb
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
Exponential
30
41
27
36
1
Total
a = (Dk) Police District k
b = (L) Location of Event
1
6
6
4
2
4
158
Gamma
9
6
6
21
3
1
1
4
2
1
7
61
Normal
Weibull
2
6
12
2
1
23
Total
48
48
48
48
48
21
12
12
12
12
21
12
12
12
12
378
BP Actual
150
RT3M
120
90
60
30
0
Patrols
FIG. 1 AVERAGE FREQUENCY UTILIZATION BY PATROL FOR DISTRICTS D1, D2, D3, D4 AND D5
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Conclusions
emergency
medical
service
using
the
hypercube
34 (2007): 727-741.
(1997): 173-189.
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