Analyzing Punjab Emergency Services Vehicle’s Movement: A Geovisual Analytics Approach

Abstract

This article presents a visual analytics approach to explore hidden patterns in Rescue 1122 Emergency vehicles in Lahore, the capital city of Punjab, the largest Province of Pakistan. These emergency vehicles are categorized into fire, rescue and ambulance services. Depending on the caller’s requirement, they serve the respective category accordingly. All of these vehicles are equipped with GPS tracker. The data obtained from these vehicles generate spatio-temporal sequences. These sequences also known as trajectories which form the core component of moving object analysis. The aim of this study is to assist government officials for efficient allocation of emergency vehicles. Currently the Rescue 1122 department works on a manual allocation that introduce some human lag as well as limitation in processing time and execution of the whole drill. The results show some interesting patterns and highlight the areas where there is a need to replan the allocation. Several visualization techniques are applied in this research to get insight into potential areas. Another portion of the research shows the involvement of caller data. Time stamps and nature of calls received by Rescue 1122 are mapped over time to identify prominent features. Visual analytics presents itself as a viable tool for analysis of data that generically appears less fruitful. The results are useful for efficient resource planning by the stakeholders. xii