Optimal Allocation of Defibrillator Drones in Mountainous Region

Responding to emergencies in mountainous regions is quite challenging  as  air  ambulances  and  mountain  rescue  services  are  often  confronted with logistics challenges and adverse weather conditions that extend the response times to reach the patients’ site.  Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is the most time-critical event that requires fast medical treatment including cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and electric shocks by automated external defibrillators (AED). An emerging technology called unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) allows overcoming the time criticality of these emergencies by reducing the time between SCA and early defibrillation.  An AED equipped drone can departure from a base station and fly to the patients’ location where a bystander receive it and start adequate interventions by using the AED. The sub-sequent paper considers this response system and proposes an integer linear program (ILP) to determine the optimal allocation of drone base stations in a given geographical region.  The developed model follows the objectives to minimize the number of used drones and to minimize the average response times to SCA events.   In an example of appli-cation, under consideration of empirical data, the authors test the developed model and demonstrate the capability of drones to fasten thedelivery of AEDs to SCA patients.   Results indicate that time spans between SCA and early defibrillation can be significantly reduced by the optimal allocation of drone base stations.