Ambulance Dispatch via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

In this paper, we solve the ambulance dispatch problem with a reinforcement learning oriented strategy. The ambulance dispatch problem is defined as deciding which ambulance to pick up which patient. Traditional studies on ambulance dispatch mainly focus on predefined protocols and are verified on simple simulation data, which are not flexible enough when facing the dynamically changing real-world cases. In this paper, we propose an efficient ambulance dispatch method based on the reinforcement learning framework, i.e., Multi-Agent Q-Network with Experience Replay(MAQR). Specifically, we firstly reformulate the ambulance dispatch problem with a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework, and then design the state, action, and reward function correspondingly for the framework. Thirdly, we design a simulator that controls ambulance status, generates patient requests and interacts with ambulances. Finally, we design extensive experiments to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.