Patient/Aircraft Forecasting for the Strategic Aeromedical Evacuation Lift-BedProcess

摘要

The goal of this research is to develop a tool for the Global Patient MovementRequirements Center (GPMRC) to efficiently forecast Aeromedical Evacuation (AE) aircraft and schedule patients in the lift-bed process. During a contingency, GPMRC is responsible for requesting required airlift, and providing lift-bed candidates to the Theater Patient Movement Requirements Center. The objective is to evacuate all waiting patients while minimizing the number of C-141 aircraft which must to be dedicated to the AE mission. In the solution process, a short-term forecast of patient movement requirements is input, including number of patients, bed and aircraft availability, and hub preferences. A mixed integer linear program is formulated, and solved. Upon reaching optimality or a user-specified node limit, the user analyzes the solution and determines if the search will be continued. At process completion, a solution file is produced which contains a feasible schedule which minimizes the number of dedicated C-141s required. The programs developed to assist the solution process were tested with 16 data sets. While optimal solutions are not guaranteed to be found for every case, the process quickly produces good, feasible solutions and provides timely, valuable information to GPMRC so it can request airlift and provide lift-bed candidates to appropriate agencies.