Weather inference and daily demand for emergency ambulance services

Area of Science:

• Emergency medicine
• Public health
• Environmental science

Background:

• Ambulance services face fluctuating daily demand.
• Understanding demand drivers is crucial for efficient resource allocation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of weather conditions on daily ambulance service demand in Hong Kong.
• To identify specific demographic and case-severity factors that modify weather-related demand.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of over 6 million emergency attendance cases from 2006-2009.
• Stratification of cases by age, triage level, admission status, CSSA recipient status, and gender.
• Correlation of stratified data with weather factors using regression analysis to determine predictability (Adjusted-R²).

Main Results:

• Weather significantly correlates with ambulance demand, with stronger effects observed in older patients (Adjusted-R²=0.76) and critically ill patients (Adjusted-R²=0.63).
• Women (Adjusted-R²=0.50) and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients (Adjusted-R²=0.54) showed higher weather dependency compared to men and non-CSSA recipients.
• Average temperature was identified as a primary weather influence on demand.

Conclusions:

• Weather variables demonstrate significant predictive power for daily ambulance demand across various population segments.
• The findings support the development of a short-term ambulance demand forecasting system based on weather data.
• Such a system could optimize ambulance service deployment and improve response to surges in demand.