Shift scheduling with linear programming : a case study in a fire station

Abstract

Due to demographic variations and climate changes, the risks of natural disasters are increasing. Therefore, with the risk of fire and other public welfare risks, firefighters are necessary to protect people in a community and its assets, responding to emergencies, quickly and effectively. This way, it is necessary to have a sufficient number of firefighters in a fire station, to give a reliable answer to any emergency that could occur. However, human and economic resources are scarce. In this paper, a linear programming approach was developed in order to determine the best shifts of the working week, minimizing the number of firefighters necessary to satisfy the already registered and emergency tasks. The results show that, with the solution obtained, there is a slack between the solution found and the reality applied in the fire station, hich could be improved by changing their shifts and reducing the number of firefighters for each shift.