locating optimal places for emergency medical centers using artificial bee colony algorithm

the emergency medical centers are very helpful since they reduce the number of death and injuries by getting to the scenes of accidents and dealing with the case immediately. as saving one's life is the prime goal in these centers, any findings and techniques which will improve the services and ease achieving the goal will be highly welcomed. the first and the major factor in giving this kind of service is the time. the place where these centers are located can play an important role to reduce the time so as to offer the service right away and on time. hence, finding the best places in a big city or cities to set up these centers to be able to give the services urgently will have a crucial importance. the method offered in this paper is to give the service qualitatively while we reduce the number of ambulances. artificial bee colony (abc) algorithm is an extended algorithm based on the bees' vigilant behavior that they search for food. this paper uses the abc algorithm to solve the problem of positioning. the findings and the correlative coefficient of the study show that this algorithm can be helpful especially in larger cities where it is difficult to locate a proper position to offer the service in an expected time.