An Application of the A* Algorithm on the Ambulance Routing
Noraimi Azlin Mohd Nordin, Norhidayah A. Kadir, Zati Aqmar Zaharuddin, and Nor Amalina Nordin
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Computer and Mathematics Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia noraimi@tmsk.uitm.edu.my, norhidayah@tmsk.uitm.edu.my, zatiaqmar@tmsk.uitm.edu.my, ring_ring86@yahoo.com
Abstract- EMS ambulance is designed to provide medical care or treatments to patient at the emergency site. If intensive care is needed, the patient will be send to the nearest hospital. Quick response and comprehensive care is vital in this case. In order to ensure the ambulance can arrive to incident site within the targeted time, ambulance availability must be ensured and the time taken to arrive must be controlled. Therefore, this paper describes the application of A* Algorithm and road network as parts of the development for the ambulance routing system. Methods mention is used in finding the shortest distance for the ambulances located at Klinik Kesihatan Shah Alam (KKSA) to the emergency sites. Based on the results obtained, we can say that routes that satisfy the 10 minutes response time has been generated by the algorithm for the EMS ambulances. It is always a preferable if ambulances can arrive at the incident faster as many lives can be saved. Keywords- EMS ambulances; shortest distance; mathematical model; A* algorithm; road network
and the time taken to arrive must be controlled. Thus, in order to help improving ambulance system, efficient ambulances’ management and system is required to increase the standard of EMS in Malaysia. EMS efficiency can be measured in many ways. The most important way of looking at this system is by examining the whole process of EMS episode [3]. Due to few challenges face by ambulance service in KKSA, we tried to reduce the problem by developing ambulance routing system. The main problem in Shah Alam is the hectic situation...