Paramedic PapersHome Cardiac arrest AED coverage depends on how responders travel
Cardiac arrest
AED coverage depends on how responders travel
Locating automated external defibrillators in urban areas: considering different travel modes
Frontiers in Public Health · 2026-10-14 · Added 30 October 2026
A Chinese spatial optimisation study of 17,842 OHCA dispatch records in Wuhan modelled AED coverage under different responder travel modes and found demand-weighted coverage ranged from 85% (driving) to 32% (walking), with universal walking coverage needing 521 extra AEDs versus 68 by car.
- Study type
- Modelling
- Design
- Spatial optimisation modelling (multimodal location set covering and maximal covering problems)
- Participants
- 17,842 ambulance dispatch records and 3,569 existing AEDs across 1,161 grid cells in Wuhan
- Main finding
- Baseline demand-weighted 4-minute coverage was 85.07% for driving, 68.27% for cycling and 31.55% for walking; universal coverage required 68 additional AEDs under a driving assumption versus 521 under walking
- Caveat
- Modelled demand in a single city with no link to actual survival outcomes
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). A Chinese megacity model rather than an Australian deployment, but the core insight — AED planning collapses if volunteer responders walk instead of drive — applies to any community responder program here.
Learning goal
Understand how responder travel modes shape AED coverage and placement in Australian urban communities.
More
- Topic: Cardiac arrest
- Daily scan: 30 October 2026
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