Dispatching/Routing of Emergency Vehicles in a Disaster Environment using Data Fusion Concepts

Abstract – The goal of our work is to develop a scalable methodology to a variety of applications requiring data fusion support for decision-making, which has direct applicability to a disaster or homeland security situation. In this work we have considered a dynamic disaster environment where an earthquake has struck and thousands of casualties are to be attended to. The fusion center outputs both L1 fusion and L2 fusion constructs. Using this information ambulances need to be dispatched to casualty pick-up locations and then deliver patients to an appropriate hospital. The key factors that affect the dispatching of ambulances to patient locations include patient priority, cluster information, and distance. Similarly, those affecting the dispatching of ambulances from patient locations to hospitals include waiting time estimates at hospital emergency rooms, hospital capacities, injury type, and distance. Routes also need to be generated for these ambulances. Route generation needs to take into account road damage information and have back-up routes ready whenever needed.