DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM NETWORK ANALYSIS FOR EMERGENCY APPLICATIONS

Transcription

1 DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM NETWORK ANALYSIS FOR EMERGENCY APPLICATIONS 1-Ashraf Gubara Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transportation, AASTMT Cairo, Egypt 2- Ali Amasha Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transportation, AASTMT Cairo, Egypt 3-Zakaria Ahmed Global Geobits Cairo, Egypt 4-Shawki El ghazali Global Geobits Cairo, Egypt ABSTRACT: Preparedness is the main criteria for immediate response for any emergency response provider (ERP) and decision support system. Emergency Response System can be either for fire emergency response system, or police station emergency response system and healthcare emergency response system. Emergency decision support system is imperative for the reduction of disaster losses and the efficiency improvement of emergency resources allocation. The objective of this paper is to establish a Geographic Information System (GIS) based healthcare emergency response system for services that can identify the optimal route from the location of incident to any healthcare service providers, and the optimal route was modeled based on the distance (the shortest path) to the closest healthcare service providers. Therefore, the main outcome from this research is to provide immediate response to any request for incidents or accidents. Basic idea behind developing this web application is that a case (patient) or incident occurs at a particular location (latitude and longitude). Knowing those locations and mapping them using (GIS) would greatly help in analyzing and visualizing the various factors associated with the incident and thus would help in providing better decision making and quicker response for any incident or accident using ArcGIS Server and web application. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the aims and objective of the research, Section 3 discusses the methodology which includes the description of the study area, data inputs and healthcare emergency response model parameters. In section 4, analyses including shortest path, spatial queries and also service area for healthcare providers are displayed. Results are presented and interpretation is illustrated in Section 4. Conclusions and discussions of future research works are outlined in Section 5 Keywords: DSS, Network Analysis, Emergency Application, GIS. 1. INTRODUCTION: Emergency Response System can be either for fire emergency response system, or police station emergency response system and healthcare emergency response system. Emergency response system DSS is a web based system integrating a series of different tasks in a single interface which provides access to the different tasks performed by different end user types (End User, The Medic, and Manager). The main tasks or models operated from single interface can be seen at Figure3, emergency response system DSS ensure that all data are accessible to all users in order to provide support for the case of incident needing immediate response. Urban fire is one of the most common problems not only for developing countries but also for developed countries (1). Emergency response service (ERS) especially in the area of fire disasters is therefore important to save the country from losing scare resources. By Geographic Information System and ERS it is now possible to perform analysis on the number and spatial distribution of fire water hydrants and their conditions, whether functioning in high or low pressure or disconnected from water source. The developed fire information system could also be spatially joined to building and cadastral parcel ORDS-40

2 database for more comprehensive decision support system. In Ghana, a very large amount of property and lives are unfortunately lost through fire annually. For instance, in the year 2006 the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) recorded one thousand nine hundred and eighty six outbreaks that destroyed properties worth thousands of Ghana cedis (2). This led to establishment of the GNFS in 1963 to control fire outbreaks in the country and to educate the public on fire safety and prevention measures while fire stations were established in the major cities. These stations were equipped with modern techniques to preserve live, property and natural resources for sustainable development of the people of Ghana (3). The objective of that paper is to establish GIS based fire emergency response services for GNFS where time plays a crucial role. In establishing fire emergency response database, emergency preparedness planning is an important issue that can impact people lives. If planned properly and implemented quickly, it can save hundreds or thousands of human lives and mitigate some of the economic losses in affected area, however if planned poorly or not implemented in a timely manner, the consequence can be dire and could cost human lives (4). Delhi is a metropolitan region with a population of about 22 million in 2011; it is the world's second most populous city and the largest city in India in terms of area. National Capital Region (NCR) and other nearby towns surrounding Delhi have nearly 22.2 million residents. All these facts along with other factors as well contribute to the increasing records in crime and due to this, Delhi is considered to be an unsafe place. Governments of India along with other associated organizations are trying hard to curb this problem in the capital city of India. The application intends to serve the purpose of reducing crime at Delhi and providing immediate response to victims in an incident by police and all crime related departments. Providing immediate response is the most crucial stage in all kinds of crimes and incidents. It relies on the preparedness of the utilities, facilities, emergency response personnel and most importantly the decision making system. This application tries to optimize the decision support system thus helps in providing quicker response for any incident or accident using Geographical Information System (GIS) (5). After knowing the location of incident - by location based service provided by the Mobile Service Provider or through geocoding the nearest patrolling vans are immediately notified, as they are being continuously tracked using third party software (3cx mobile device manager) which could be exported to Arc Map and represented as point feature layer. (6, 7, 8) Pasha (2006) studied identified problems faced by emergency service providers on road network in Hyderabad city. In this research an integrated GIS based prototype system was developed for the routing of ambulance on road network such that it finds the accident location on the road network and locates the nearest ambulance to incident site using the real-time technologies (GPS/GSM). The system also creates the fastest route from nearest ambulance to accident site, and from there to nearest hospital. Using ArcGIS network analyst, congestion on roads during peak hours was considered, and the fastest route on both major and minor roads was created (9). Min and Wei-fang (2012) discussed the establishment of the roads spatial database in a GIS Environment and also described the GIS network shortest path algorithm. They used Harbin urban roads map combined with building designs and photographs as primary data source (10). In a similar research, El Houssaini and Badri (2012) developed a GIS-Based monitoring system for Road Network. Using information on road infrastructure and Dijkstra s algorithm (as implemented in ArcGIS) optimal route based on minimum cost were identified (11). 2. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this paper is to establish a GIS-based solution for healthcare emergency services. It can identify not only the optimal route from the identified location of the incident to any ORDS-41

3 healthcare service providers but also the available healthcare service at the healthcare provider. The plotted optimal route was modeled based on the distance (the shortest path) to the closest healthcare service providers. The expected outcome is summarized as to support emergency responsible providing an immediate response to any incident or accident. Basic idea behind developing this web application is that a case (patient) or incident occurs at a particular location (latitude and longitude). Knowing those locations and mapping them using GIS would greatly help in analyzing and visualizing the various factors associated with the incident and thus would help in providing better decision making and quicker response. 3. MODELING THE HEALTHCARE EMER GENCY RESPONSE SYSTEM This Section discusses the study area, data input, analysis (e.g. to find the shortest path or route, perform a buffer for healthcare provider) and data output. The materials that were used for the project were topographic map; ArcGIS Desktop ver.10.0 and also ArcGIS server manager 10.0 as tools. 3.1 DATABASE DESIGN, DATA INPUT AND MANIPULATION: The GIS datasets and Database used in this research are: hospitals, buildings, parcels, green area and road centerline and all of these layers are GIS ready datasets. We have constructed Database tables on Microsoft Access to complete the model and find a solution as example: a table for each reception of hospital or healthcare provider and table for the working day showing which reception of hospital are opening at the selected time. Each table consists of records that contain fields like Hospital ID, Date, In Patient, In patient Name, Out Patient, Out Patient Name, Current and Availability. Also there is a summary table which includes hospital ID, hospital Name, capacity, availability, working day, all healthcare facility and clinics as shown at Fig (1) ERD of the data model. The model tested and run on the Mokattam study area. It was chosen as a case study because of the insufficient public healthcare centers. Fig.1: Entity Relationship Diagram 3.2 DATA PROCESSING Survey was conducted to coordinate the Healthcare providers, and their distributions in the study area. We have constructed a model for an emergency healthcare response system based on GIS datasets and newly initiated database tables. The database tables are: - Table of hospital reception for each healthcare service provider (TABARAK, DAR AL UMM center, AL RAKAWE, MOKATAM, AL SAFWA, AL ZOHOUR, AL MOKATAM dentist). - Table of the working days for each healthcare provider and - Summary table. The ERD was created as shown in Fig.1. The sequence of running the model and the expected results are described in the flow chart, Fig.2. ORDS-42

4 Call 123 (request for service) Image + thematic data Query Database Ambulance at AL BAHR AL AAZAM and here the call is switched to the proper location depending on their division ( they divide AL QAHIRA AL KOBRA to Cairo, Giza and Kalyubia. Here AL MOKATTAM our case study will be at south Cairo), the main problem we try to solve it that we want to reduce time to carry the patient from his place to the nearest hospital to save his life and accordingly decrease mortality numbers, also reduce loss of governmental resources used like (streets, cars, gasoline, people, doctors, etc ). Service Provider depend on the working day Service facility Availability 2- The image or satellite map of AL MOKATTAM will appear as a base map, then, Results and output of query GIS {shortest path and closest facility} Decision module User Interface // Web application Figure 2: Basic flow chart of emergency healthcare response system EMERGENCY HEALTCARE RESPONSE SYSTEM STEPS: 1- When an emergency call 123 is coming requesting for a service, call center takes an important information about the incident or an accident, his triple name, telephone or mobile, location of the case, type of the case which means (transportation, accident, zombie, etc.) all these information are done at call center at 6 th of October then the call is transferred to Ambulance, Egyptian 3- The medic take an order to go to a specific place of accident or to an incident, take the case to the nearest hospital and then maybe the hospital reject accepting the case due non availability of beds or the (section) facility of services the case is needed N/A ( NOT AVAILABLE), so the result case still at ambulance from one hospital to anther until finding the available health service facility and available beds etc which takes too much time meaning loss the life of the case and waste resources like (streets, cars, gasoline, people, doctors, etc ). The medic take the decision depend on his experience about which hospital to go with the case, and which route to take it. 4- the nearest ambulance car to the case will take it after doing quick queries on the database that reside at ministry of health to inform about the healthcare service providers opening at the selected time and which facilities the case needs and if there is available beds empty or not. 5- The results of quires including which healthcare providers open at the selected time and having the service facility and the ORDS-43

5 availability will appear at the end user interface on the base map with different flashing color with their distribution of location Fig Performing network analyst to determine the closest facility and the shortest path from an incident to the hospital at the results on step (5), Give the medic alternatives to decide which hospital to choose. 7- The results appear at the user interface (web application) with the decision suitable to all previous queries and calculation. support system thus help in providing quicker response for any incident or accident using GIS. A healthcare information system has been developed to identify the shortest path from the case or incident to the closest healthcare provider, the queries through the system's geo-database could be made to identify the healthcare facility on the selected time with the availability of specializations and beds as well. Also proximity analysis such as spatial buffering could be performed to suggest possible locations and allocations of healthcare provider. 3.3 GIS NETWORK ANALYSIS FOR SHORTEST PATH As one of the main functions of GIS, network analysis plays an important role in vehicle routing, traffic tourism, urban planning, electric power, communication and closest facility (10). This network (as implemented in ArcGIS) is used, among other things, to build an immediate, rapid and efficient emergency health response system. The network analyst can be used to analyze problems such as vehicle routing, closest facility and service area. For instance if there is a health incident a (case), using ArcGIS could identify the optimal route from its service station to the health incident and could also perform analysis to locate the closest healthcare provider. In network analysis, the most fundamental and the most critical problem is the computation of optimal route between different locations on a network (11, 10). 4. ANALYSIS, RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION Fig.3: locations of healthcare providers, shortest path and the closest hospital to an incident. As shown in fig.3. All healthcare providers mapped the study area appear with red color; the shortest path or route (red line) between a particular healthcare provider and an incident (Blue Square) was calculated using geometric distance only. Preparedness is the main criteria for immediate response for any emergency response provider (ERP) and decision support system also plays a vital role. Which route to follow, which are the nearest hospitals, the analysis can be performed using the visualization provided by Geographic Information System (GIS). All these incidents and related information can be stored in the geodatabase for future references and analysis which would help in understanding the healthcare trends. This application tries to optimize the decision ORDS-44

6 Fig.4: Screenshots of Emergency Response system applying quires as an example. Fig.4: displays the result for query about the healthcare facility which is here Psychiatry and neurological clinic on the selected time which was Saturday and the availability is more than ten beds. And the result appear that there are 4 places that have this specialization those AL ZOHUR hospital at street 9, AL RAKHAWE hospital at street 14 and DAR AL MOKATAM hospital at two places at street CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS A GIS based application for healthcare emergency response system services has been developed, constructed, implemented and validated to manage healthcare in AL MOKATAM Zone at south of Cairo. The system integrates data acquisition from databases and plots the locationbased features on satellite image through a web base interface which gives access to all different tasks by different end users types (End User, the Medic, manager) to be a decision taker or policy makers at system management. It focuses on finding a way to quickly locate an incident or case. With this application it is now possible to identify the shortest path or route in terms of the distance; in addition spatial database for healthcare emergency response system was created to perform geospatial analysis for suggesting new locations for healthcare providers and perform a buffer for them in the study area. It also possible to query about the location of any healthcare providers and any health facility that is available in the selected time or not and if there is available beds if needed or not. The developed application provides a useful decision support system to determine the shortest path and the closest facility to an incident. We recommend linking reception of each hospital with emergency station directly for reducing time, effort, resources and saving people life. Also plan to make clinical decision support system with electronic health records for each patient and link this with his location. This application can be applied for fire emergency system or the crime fighting system with changing the dataset and database required for each one, by applying this model on healthcare at the database of ministry of health this will provide more stability, efficiency and effectiveness for saving patient life and reducing loss of government resources. REFRENCES: 1- Nisanci, R. GIS Based Fire Analysis and Production of Fire-risk Maps: The Trabzon Experience, Scientific Research and Essays Vol. 5(9), 2010, pp Aziz, A. Fire Service Records 1986 Fires. Daily Graphic online, 8th February Available from: com.gh. (May 4, 2012), 2007, pp Forkuo, E.K and Jonathan, A. Quaye- Ballard, GIS Based Fire Emergency Response System / International Journal of Remote Sensing and GIS, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2013, pp Nguyen, A. University Campus Emergency Evacuation Plan. CP255: Advance GIS. University of California, Berkeley, Available from: ORDS-45

7 UCB_Evac_WP.pdf. (June 10, 2010). 5- Anshul Bhagat, Nikhil Sharma, GIS-Based Application for Emergency Preparedness and Management Accelerating Response System through GIS, 14th ESRI India User Conference es/business/case-studies es Pasha, I. Ambulance Management System using GIS (Unpublished). MSc Thesis in Geo informatics, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden,2006, pp Min, S., and Wei-fang, W. Application of GIS Best Path Algorithm in Harbin Roads. World Rural Observations 4(1), 2012, pp El Houssaini, S., and Badri, A. Development of a GIS-Based Monitoring System for Road Network. Journal of Computing, Volume 4, Issue, 2012, pp Zhang, F., Qiu, A., and Li, Q. Improve on Dijkstra Shortest Path Algorithm for Huge Data. ISPRS Archives, Vol. XXXVIII- 7/C4, 2009, pp ORDS-46