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Location-Allocation of Emergency Service Systems in Light Traffic

X.R. Wang, Weiliang Liu, Loon Ching Tang, Zhi‐Sheng Ye

Operations Research | Oct 27, 2026

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What this paper is about

The key innovation is to turn limiting queueing behavior as call arrival rates approach zero into explicit approximations for performance losses associated with calls that have to wait, enabling mixed-integer linear programming formulations with theoretical guarantees on solution quality in the light-traffic regime.

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Light-Traffic Asymptotics for Emergency Service Planning Timely emergency response depends on where rescue teams are stationed and which areas they serve—decisions that shape response times and uncertainty in each team’s service durations and availability. In “Location-Allocation of Emergency Service Systems in Light Traffic,” Xin Wang, Weiliang Liu, Loon Ching Tang, and Zhisheng Ye use light-traffic asymptotics to explicitly capture these decision-dependent effects in tractable queueing-based location-allocation optimization models. The key innovation is to turn limiting queueing behavior as call arrival rates approach zero into explicit approximations for performance losses associated with calls that have to wait. These approximations connect queueing performance to planning decisions, enabling mixed-integer linear programming formulations with theoretical guarantees on solution quality in the light-traffic regime. In simulations using Singapore lift-trap rescue data, the optimized plans reduced projected annual late rescues by about 70% relative to the existing arrangement.

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Authors

Researchers on this paper

X.R. Wang

first | National University of Singapore | ORCID 0000-0001-6633-4474

Weiliang Liu

middle | Chinese University of Hong Kong | ORCID 0000-0002-7556-6565

Loon Ching Tang

middle | National University of Singapore | ORCID 0000-0002-3363-4566

Zhi‐Sheng Ye

last | National University of Singapore | ORCID 0000-0001-5731-3911

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BibTeX

@article{Wang2026Location,
  title = {Location-Allocation of Emergency Service Systems in Light Traffic},
  author = {X.R. Wang and Weiliang Liu and Loon Ching Tang and Zhi‐Sheng Ye},
  journal = {Operations Research},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1287/opre.2024.1272},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2024.1272}
}

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