Lancaster, Pennsylvania (June 16, 2009) – Mr. Jason Diefenderfer, Emergency Health Services Department, County of Bucks and Mr. Bruce Stauffer, Vice President of geographIT^® gave a joint presentation titled “GIS Modeling of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) Squad Dispatch Orders” at the 2009 Pennsylvania GIS Conference.  The presentation discussed using GIS network modeling techniques to determine the travel times from 157 EMS Squad locations to each of 1,255 EMS Blocks in Bucks County.  Model output was used to derive EMS Block thematic maps showing fastest responding squad service area; fastest response times; response time standard deviation; and an index of variability in squad dispatch order.  These maps and a histogram of response times by EMS Block showing the mean and standard deviation thresholds are useful for coordinating EMS services with municipalities and squads.  Furthermore, modeling output can be used to produce a rank order of the fastest EMS squads for each EMS Block that can be uploaded into the E-911 computer aided dispatch (CAD) system for dispatching the EMS squad with the fastest response time to an EMS Block.  The presentation reflected the findings of a prototype for software currently being developed by geographIT^® for the County of Bucks.