Emergency Vehicle Dispatching and Redistribution in Highway Network Based on Bilevel Programming

Response time is a key factor in the emergency vehicle dispatching problem. Because regional emergency vehicles are limited, vehicle gaps will be created in the rescue station after vehicles are dispatched to several accidents, which affects quick response to the subsequent incidents. To solve this problem, a bilevel programming model for emergency vehicle dispatching and redistribution is established, of which the optimal objectives are the shortest rescue time for current accidents and the shortest time for vehicle redistribution, and the key constraints are emergency vehicle requirements and accident time windows. In the precondition of effective rescue of current accidents, emergency vehicles are redistributed according to the potential risks in the rescue station coverage area. A bilevel shuffled frog leaping algorithm is proposed to solve the bilevel programming model. The dispatching results of examples show that the model conforms to dispatching decision rule and the bilevel shuffled frog leaping algorithm can resolve the bilevel programming model fast and efficiently.