A Generalized Model for Scheduling Multi-Objective Multiple Shuttle Ambulance Vehicles to Evacuate COVID-19 Quarantine Cases

ABSTRACT

This chapter is devoted to present a generalized model for scheduling multiple ambulance vehicles from multiple ambulance centers assigned to evacuate COVID-19 patients. The proposed formulation is a multi-objective multiple 0–1 mathematical model as a new application of the multi-objective multiple 0/1 knapsack problem. The scheduling aims at achieving the best utilization of the time shift as a planning time window. The best utilization of time is evaluated by a compromise between maximizing the number of evacuated people who might be infected with the virus to the isolation hospitals and maximizing the evacuated patients having higher relative priorities measured according to their health status. The complete mathematical model for the problem is formulated including the representation of binary decision variables, the problem constraints, and the multi-objective functions. The proposed multi-objective multiple ambulances model is applied to an illustrated case study in Great Cairo, Egypt, the case study aims at improving the scheduling of ambulance vehicles in the back-and-forth shuttle movements between patient locations and the available multiple isolation hospitals with multiple ambulance vehicles. The solution procedure is illustrated while two efficient solutions for the case study with different numbers of evacuated patients are obtained. The proposed mathematical model is so general that it can be applied to cases covering the whole Governorates and even the whole country all over the world. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.