A Bayesian Learning Approach for Drone Coverage Network: A Case Study on Cardiac Arrest in Scotland

Drones are becoming popular as a complementary system for Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Although several pilot studies and flight trials have shown the feasibility of drone-assisted Automated External Defibrillator (AED) delivery, running a full-scale operational network remains challenging due to high capital expenditure and environmental uncertainties. In this paper, we formulate a reliability-informed Bayesian learning framework for designing drone-assisted AED delivery networks under environmental and operational uncertainty. We propose our objective function based on the survival probability of Out-off Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) patients to identify the ideal locations of drone stations. Moreover, we consider the coverage of existing EMS infrastructure to improve the response reliability in remote areas. We illustrate our proposed method using geographically referenced cardiac arrest data from Scotland. The result shows how environmental variability and spatial demand patterns influence optimal drone station placement across urban and rural regions. In addition, we assess the robustness of the network and evaluate its economic viability using a cost-effectiveness analysis based on expected Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY). The findings suggest that drone-assisted AED delivery is expected to be cost-effective and has the potential to significantly improve the emergency response coverage in rural and urban areas with longer ambulance response times.