A Markovian Decision Model for Deciding How Many Fire Companies to Dispatch
针对消防部门派遣车辆的两难问题，提出一个马尔可夫决策模型，给出基于火警严重概率、周边报警率和可用车辆数的简单决策规则，能显著缩短严重火灾的响应时间。
In deciding how many units to dispatch to an incoming alarm of unknown seventy the fire department is faced with a dilemma: If too few units are sent initially the extra units needed will be delayed; if too many units are sent, the extra units make a needless response and are temporarily unavailable for subsequent alarms. In this paper, we present a Markovian decision model for this problem. The model leads to a simple decision rule that considers three key factors: (1) the probability that the incoming alarm is serious (the greater the probability the more units dispatched); (2) the expected alarm rate in the area surrounding the alarm (the greater the alarm rate, the fewer units dispatched); and (3) the number of units available in the area surrounding the alarm (the more units available, the more units dispatched). We compare the decision rule to policies commonly in use and find that it results in significant improvements in response time to serious fires.