Optimal Location of Regional Emergency Trauma Centers Using Geocoded Crash Data
Crashes on highways tend to be more serious on account of the high-speed driving of the vehicles involved. Therefore, a delay in handling a crash or transporting a patient may mean additional personal injury. To prevent such injury, quick emergency respon
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Abstract Crashes on highways tend to be more serious on account of the high-speed driving of the vehicles involved. Therefore, a delay in handling a crash or transporting a patient may mean additional personal injury. To prevent such injury, quick emergency response is required. The purpose of this study is to analyze the optimal locations of regional emergency trauma centers, which allow for the effective handling of emergency trauma patients, and to determine the priority of each candidate hospital in terms of establishing trauma centers. Under such purpose, this study geocoded highway crash records to create a basis for spatial analysis and determined the priority of each candidate hospital by calculating the number of crashes handled based on the traffic volume and the severity of crashes using the maximum covering location problem model. The significance of this study is that it provides a basis for prioritizing the government’s financial supports for the candidate hospitals.
Keywords Maximum covering location problem Geocoding Regional emergency trauma center Equivalent property damage only Spatial analysis
1 Introduction The number of persons killed or injured by crashes on highways between 2012 and 2014 is 286 and 1452, respectively. Crashes on highways tend to be more serious because of the high-speed driving of the vehicles involved. Therefore, a delay in handling a crash or transporting a patient may mean additional personal injury. To prevent such injury, quick emergency response is required. For this reason, many S.H. Park O.H. Kwon (&) Department of Transportation, Engineering College of Engineering, Keimyung University, 1095 Dalgubeol-daero Dalseo-gu, Daegu 42601, Republic of Korea e-mail: [email protected] S.H. Park e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 J.J. (Jong Hyuk) Park et al. (eds.), Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 393, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1536-6_79
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commentators have pointed out the need for trauma centers complete with facilities, equipment, and workforce to treat patients with multiple fractures or bleeding (severely injured) patients, who require treatment outside the capabilities of typical emergency rooms as soon as they arrive at the hospital. To address such need, the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare established a plan to establish 17 regional emergency trauma centers evenly distributed across the nation by 2017 so that severely injured patients may receive treatment within an hour anywhere in Korea. The regional emergency trauma centers need to be located close to locations where crashes occur at a higher frequency to ensure quick treatment of severely injured patients and, therefore, to improve their survivability. To be more precise, the efficacy of a regional emergency trauma center can be improved by locating it closer to places where a higher number of serious crashes occur. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the optimal locati
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