An approach to uncertainty in emergency service systems via scenarios and fuzzy values

Abstract

When a service system is being designed, its resistance to randomly occurring detrimental events is often assessed. Several approaches can be used to include the influence of the events in the design process. This contribution deals with two such approaches. The first approach is based on making the system resistant to a finite set of scenarios. The second approach takes input data as fuzzy values and seeks a design solution where the objective function value belongs to a fuzzy set of good objective function values at the maximal level of satisfaction. Each approach models uncertainty in a different way and we will focus on studying the impact of the used uncertainty model on the resulting min-sum optimal emergency service system design, which is characterized by a deployment of a limited number of service centers in a serviced geographical region.