• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2013

This paper aims to determine the optimal location of expressway patrol vehicle stations that minimizes additional troubles caused by the delay of crash treatments. To do this, we formulate a maximum covering problem and a p-center problem weighted by crash frequency, using the shortest distance as the criteria for allocating service district, and we employ the Lagrangian relaxation algorithm to solve the former and Daskin's heuristic algorithm to solve the latter, respectively. Based on crash data of Korean expressways, the results from the proposed models are compared with the current location of patrol vehicle stations by using several indices as the level of service for crash treatment, such as maximum crash-weighted distance, average crash-weighted distance, and average access distance. The results show that the proposed models improve average access distance and time by about 10km and 10min, respectively. When allocation for service district is changed only with the fixed current location, the level of service can be also improved. The models and results proposed in this paper can contribute to improving the level of service for crash treatment on expressways. They can also provide the theoretical basis on the location decision for other various emergency facilities, and the allocation decision for floating service districts according to time-period crash data.