Jan M. Chaiken

Response Areas for Two Emergency Units

This paper gives a model in which two urban emergency service units such as fire engines or ambulances cooperate in responding to alarms or calls from the public in a specified region of a city. Given the home locations of the units and the spatial distribution of alarm rates, it is possible to specify which unit should respond to each alarm by defining a response area for each unit. The average response time to alarms and the workload of each unit are calculated as functions of the boundary that separates their response areas. The boundaries that minimize average response time and the ones that equalize workload are determined. Some boundaries can be dominated, in the sense that another boundary improves both workload balance and response time. The set of undominated boundaries is found.

Selective Incapacitation Strategies Based on Estimated Crime Rates

Methods for estimating the crime commission rates of criminal offenders are discussed in the context of a potential selective incapacitation strategy that would assign different sentence lengths according to whether the estimated crime rate is above or below a specified threshold. Any such strategy is subject to error because the true crime rate of an offender may differ from his estimated crime rate. For two strategies having the same cost, one of them is favored over the other if it has a higher expected number of crimes averted or if it has a lower probability of assigning long sentences to offenders with low crime rates. Both of these criteria are met by using a Bayes estimate of the crime rate rather than a maximum likelihood estimate. This is demonstrated by calculating the distribution of true crime rates for offenders whose estimates are above a threshold.

Fire Department Deployment Analysis: A Public Policy Analysis Case Study-- The RAND Fire Project.

What do you do to start reading fire department deployment analysis a public policy analysis case study? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. Its not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this fire department deployment analysis a public policy analysis case study.

The effects of fiscal contraction on innovation in the public sector

Beginning in the mid-1970s, fiscal limitation laws, shrinking revenue bases in older cities, and reductions in state and federal grants all have reduced the resources available to carry out the functions of local government. What do these changes portend for the amount of innovation in local government, the types of innovations that are introduced, and the processes of introduction? This paper examines these questions by reviewing the literature on factors related to innovation in public service agencies and reorienting its implications in the new fiscal environment.We conclude that on the whole the innovative process in the public sector has fallen on hard times. Yet, we identify those factors that a creative, innovative administrator can use to advantage in a period of fiscal constraints to bring about innovation. We also identify types of innovations that are likely to succeed.

SOME TRENDS IN THE DELIVERY OF AMBULANCE SERVICES

A composite description of present (1973) and planned emergency ambulance systems is provided based on information from 179 applicants to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for grants for regional emergency medical systems. The data indicate that only 11.1 percent of the ambulance services are now provided by funeral homes and 34.5 percent are provided by local government agencies. Local government agencies operate 28.9 percent of all emergency vehicles and volunteer agencies operate 19.2 percent. Most ambulance services are provided primarily by small agencies, with minimal coordination. A great deal of confusion surrounds telephone numbers for emergency services, but centralized systems are being initiated in a number of communities. Some obstacles remain to the installation of 911 emergency numbers across State or service boundaries. The advantages and disadvantages of a centralized command and control system of dispatching ambulances for several ambulance agencies are weighed and several configurations are proposed. Analysis of the time between dispatch of the ambulance and its arrival show a median of four minutes for urban areas and up to 25 minutes in rural areas. The 1973 level of ambulance attendant training shows that many areas depend on personnel with little or no training for providing initial emergency care. Training courses developed by the United States Department of Transportation for emergency medical technicians and dispatchers appear acceptable as reasonable goals for implementation within two years.