Superior Ambulance Call Out Rate Forecasting Using Meteorological Data

Abstract:

Ambulances are an integral part of a country’s infrastructure ensuring its citizens and visitors are kept healthy. The impact of weather, climate and climate change on ambulance services around the world has received increasing attention in recent years but most studies have been area specific and there is a need to establish basic relationships between ambulance data (both response and illness data) and meteorological parameters.

In this presentation, the effects of temperature and relative humidity on ambulance call out rates for different medical categories will be investigated. We use call out data obtained from the London Ambulance Service (LAS) and meteorological data from a central London meteorological station. A time-series analysis was utilized to understand the relation between temperature, relative humidity, air pollutants and different call out categories.

There are statistically significant relationships between mean temperature and ambulance callout rate for most of the categories investigated. Most categories show a negative dependence on temperature, i.e. call outs increase with decreasing temperature but some categories showed a positive dependence such as alcohol related call outs. Relative humidity is significant for some categories but in general is much less important than temperature. Significant time lag effects were observed for most of the categories related to infectious illnesses, which are transferrable through human contact.

These findings support the opinion that ambulance attendance callouts records are an effective and well-timed source of data and can be used for health early warning systems. Furthermore the presented results can much improve our understanding of the relationships between meteorological conditions and human health thereby allowing for better prediction of ambulance use through the application of long and short-term weather forecasts.