“Our research has two components: first, locate the ambulances throughout the city, and second, routing them to the patients,” said Boutilier, a PhD candidate in industrial engineering working under the supervision of Professor Timothy Chan of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. “If the city of Dhaka is going to implement an ambulance service, where should these be stationed around the city, how many are needed, and what are the most effective routes?”
To find the answers, Boutilier and local collaborator Moinul Hossain, a traffic engineer and professor from Islamic University of Technology, collected data through a patient survey and created a GPS device with an android app to put into rental cars. They then had the cars drive around the city throughout the day in order to collect their locations and learn about the traffic patterns.
Full article at: World Economic Forum