1998 TRANSPORTATION CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS An Assessment of Emergency Response Vehicle Pre-Deployment Using GIS Identification of High-Accident Density Locations

On average, over 15,000 crashes occur daily in the United States, most of which involve only damage to property. However, for crashes that involve injury, response time is critical. Ideally, if a specific accident location could be accurately predicted beforehand, an emergency ve-hicle could be dispatched before the accident occurs. Although this is not possible, the identification of high-accident locations using histori-cal crash trends might allow the positioning of response vehicles so as to minimize the expected travel time to incidents. This paper summa-rizes research to identify the potential benefits of emergency vehicle pre-deployment. This research uses point location data from Iowa’s Accident Location Analysis System (ALAS) for the period 1990-1995 to generate maps of high accident locations for Des Moines, Iowa. The emergency medical service facilities will be used in conjunction with the roadway network to determine the service areas of the existing fa-cilities. The recommended location/allocation of emergency response vehicles will be determined using the power of a Geographic Informa-tion System (GIS). The network analysis capabilities of GIS will be used to estimate the response times of strategically placed emergency vehicles; this will be compared to actual response times. Key words: response time, crash analysis, GIS, EMS