Location of Automated External Defibrillators

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of the allocation and location of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) is considered. An AED is a portable device that has been developed to allow for emergency treatment against sudden heart seizures such as myocardial infarction by electric shock in the absence of healthcare workers. This emergency treatment by AED must be administered as soon as possible following heart seizure. Therefore, it should be easily accessible. We discuss the problem of placing a fixed number of AEDs in a given set of buildings. For this problem, we determine both the number of AEDs that should be allocated to each building and the location of each AED in the building. We formulate this combination problem by considering the rectilinear distance and developing an algorithm to obtain a good approximation solution.