Development and application of a fire station placement model

This paper describes the development and application of a fire station placement model. The model is formulated as a mathematical programming model which locates p sites out of m candidate sites such that some function of the travel times of the first and second arriving fire units is maximized subject to several constraints. Among these constraints are limitations in the maximum allowable travel time to points in a region, requirements that certain sites be included or excluded, and a specification that a given number of existing sites be included. The model uses as an objective function a utility function based on the subjective preferences of fire department officials to travel times of the first and second arriving fire units. A modification of the Teitz and Bart "node substitution" heuristic is used to find the solution to the model. The model is applied to fire station locational decisions in Albany, NY. The model was run a number of times to provide insights into how some strategic decisions might be made.