Forecasting emergency medical service call arrival rates

DOI10.1214/10-AOAS442zbMATH Open1223.62161arXiv1107.4919OpenAlexW1971541813MaRDI QIDQ641084FDOQ641084

Authors: David S. Matteson, Mathew W. McLean, D. B. Woodard, Shane G. Henderson 

Publication date: 21 October 2011

Published in: The Annals of Applied Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We introduce a new method for forecasting emergency call arrival rates that combines integer-valued time series models with a dynamic latent factor structure. Covariate information is captured via simple constraints on the factor loadings. We directly model the count-valued arrivals per hour, rather than using an artificial assumption of normality. This is crucial for the emergency medical service context, in which the volume of calls may be very low. Smoothing splines are used in estimating the factor levels and loadings to improve long-term forecasts. We impose time series structure at the hourly level, rather than at the daily level, capturing the fine-scale dependence in addition to the long-term structure. Our analysis considers all emergency priority calls received by Toronto EMS between January 2007 and December 2008 for which an ambulance was dispatched. Empirical results demonstrate significantly reduced error in forecasting call arrival volume. To quantify the impact of reduced forecast errors, we design a queueing model simulation that approximates the dynamics of an ambulance system. The results show better performance as the forecasting method improves. This notion of quantifying the operational impact of improved statistical procedures may be of independent interest.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4919

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zbMATH Keywords

dynamic factor modelnonhomogeneous Poisson processsmoothing splinesinteger-valued time seriesambulance planning

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Factor analysis and principal components; correspondence analysis (62H25) Time series, auto-correlation, regression, etc. in statistics (GARCH) (62M10) Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis (62P10) Inference from stochastic processes and prediction (62M20) Applications of statistics (62P99)

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Cited In (15)

• A nonparametric approach for multiple change point analysis of multivariate data
• Stationarity of generalized autoregressive moving average models
• Forecasting time series of inhomogeneous Poisson processes with application to call center workforce management
• Modeling time series of counts with COM-Poisson INGARCH models
• Determining the number of factors in constrained factor models via Bayesian information criterion
• Practical statistical methods for call centres with a case study addressing urgent medical care delivery
• On a multistage discrete stochastic optimization problem with stochastic constraints and nested sampling
• Quasi maximum likelihood analysis of high dimensional constrained factor models
• Simultaneous transformation and rounding (STAR) models for integer-valued data
• Zero-inflated Poisson and negative binomial integer-valued GARCH models
• Ambulance emergency response optimization in developing countries
• Predicting Melbourne ambulance demand using kernel warping
• Statistical theory powering data science
• Modeling overdispersed or underdispersed count data with generalized Poisson integer-valued GARCH models
• Empirical Spatial Density-Based Emergency Medical Service Demand Forecast for Ambulance Allocation

Uses Software

• R
• gss
• gam
• mgcv
• gamair

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