Abstract
The quality of service and efficiency of labour utilization in emergency service fleets, such as police, fire departments, and emergency medical services (EMS), depends, among other things, on the efficiency of work break scheduling. The workload of such fleets usually cannot be forecasted with certainty and its urgency requires an immediate response. However, prolonged focused work periods decrease efficiency with related decline of attention and performance. Therefore, break schedule should be regularly updated as the work shift progresses to allow frequent and sufficiently long time for rest. In this paper, we propose a distributed and dynamic work break scheduling algorithm for crews in emergency service vehicle fleets. Based on the historical intervention data, the algorithm rearranges vehicles’ crews’ work breaks in a manner considering individual crews’ preferences. Moreover, it dynamically reallocates stand-by vehicles for best coverage of a region of interest. We analyze the proposed algorithm and show its performance and efficiency on the EMS use-case.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bash, B.A., Desnoyers, P.J.: Exact distributed Voronoi cell computation in sensor networks. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, pp. 236–243. ACM (2007)
Beer, A., Gartner, J., Musliu, N., Schafhauser, W., Slany, W.: An AI-based break-scheduling system for supervisory personnel. IEEE Intell. Syst. 25(2), 60–73 (2010)
Van den Bergh, J., Beliën, J., De Bruecker, P., Demeulemeester, E., De Boeck, L.: Personnel scheduling: a literature review. Eur. J. Oper. Res. (EJOR) 226(3), 367–385 (2013)
Bhandari, A., Scheller-Wolf, A., Harchol-Balter, M.: An exact and efficient algorithm for the constrained dynamic operator staffing problem for call centers. Manage. Sci. 54(2), 339–353 (2008)
Billhardt, H., Fernández, A., Lemus, L., Lujak, M., Osman, N., Ossowski, S., Sierra, C.: Dynamic coordination in fleet management systems: toward smart cyber fleets. IEEE Intell. Syst. 29(3), 70–76 (2014)
Billhardt, H., Lujak, M., Sánchez-Brunete, V., Fernández, A., Ossowski, S.: Dynamic coordination of ambulances for emergency medical assistance services. Knowl.-Based Syst. 70, 268–280 (2014)
Chiuso, A., Fagnani, F., Schenato, L., Zampieri, S.: Gossip algorithms for distributed ranking. In: American Control Conference (ACC), 2011, pp. 5468–5473. IEEE (2011)
Defraeye, M., Van Nieuwenhuyse, I.: Staffing and scheduling under nonstationary demand for service: a literature review. Omega 58, 4–25 (2016)
Di Gaspero, L., Gärtner, J., Musliu, N., Schaerf, A., Schafhauser, W., Slany, W.: Automated shift design and break scheduling. In: Uyar, A., Ozcan, E., Urquhart, N. (eds.) Automated Scheduling and Planning. SCI, vol. 505, pp. 109–127. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39304-4_5
Ernst, A.T., Jiang, H., Krishnamoorthy, M., Sier, D.: Staff scheduling and rostering: a review of applications, methods and models. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 153(1), 3–27 (2004)
Huisman, D., Freling, R., Wagelmans, A.P.: Multiple-depot integrated vehicle and crew scheduling. Transp. Sci. 39(4), 491–502 (2005)
Hur, D., Mabert, V.A., Bretthauer, K.M.: Real-time work schedule adjustment decisions: an investigation and evaluation. Prod. Oper. Manage. 13(4), 322–339 (2004)
Lloyd, S.: Least squares quantization in PCM. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 28(2), 129–137 (1982)
Lujak, M., Billhardt, H.: Coordinating emergency medical assistance. In: Ossowski, S. (ed.) Agreement Technologies. LGTS, vol. 8, pp. 597–609. Springer, Dordrecht (2013). doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5583-3_35
Lujak, M., Billhardt, H., Ossowski, S.: Optimizing emergency medical assistance coordination in after-hours urgent surgery patients. In: Bulling, N. (ed.) EUMAS 2014. LNCS, vol. 8953, pp. 316–331. Springer, Cham (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17130-2_21
Lujak, M., Billhardt, H., Ossowski, S.: Distributed coordination of emergency medical service for angioplasty patients. Ann. Math. Artif. Intell. 78(1), 73–100 (2016)
Mehrotra, V., Ozlük, O., Saltzman, R.: Intelligent procedures for intra-day updating of call center agent schedules. Prod. Oper. Manage. 19(3), 353–367 (2010)
Mesquita, M., Moz, M., Paias, A., Paixão, J., Pato, M., Respício, A.: A new model for the integrated vehicle-crew-rostering problem and a computational study on rosters. J. Sched. 14(4), 319–334 (2011)
Rekik, M., Cordeau, J.F., Soumis, F.: Implicit shift scheduling with multiple breaks and work stretch duration restrictions. J. Sched. 13(1), 49–75 (2010)
Robbins, T.R., Harrison, T.P.: A stochastic programming model for scheduling call centers with global service level agreements. EJOR 207(3), 1608–1619 (2010)
Widl, M., Musliu, N.: An improved memetic algorithm for break scheduling. In: Blesa, M.J., Blum, C., Raidl, G., Roli, A., Sampels, M. (eds.) HM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6373, pp. 133–147. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-16054-7_10
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lujak, M., Billhardt, H. (2017). A Distributed Algorithm for Dynamic Break Scheduling in Emergency Service Fleets. In: An, B., Bazzan, A., Leite, J., Villata, S., van der Torre, L. (eds) PRIMA 2017: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10621. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69131-2_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69131-2_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69130-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69131-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)