A screenshot of IIT Madras's Dynamic Ambulance Positioning tool shows suggested ambulance locations and road accident super-hotspots on the corridor from Tambaram towards Chengalpattu in Tamil Nadu. (Photo: IIT Madras via special arrangement)

IIT Madras maps 4,403 road accident hotspots to place 4,237 ambulances

IIT Madras researchers have drawn a nationwide map that suggests where 4,237 ambulances should wait to reach road accident victims fastest. Here is how the tool works, which state may use it and what the team says it cannot yet prove.

by · India Today

In Short

  • IIT Madras maps where 4,237 ambulances should wait for accidents
  • Map flags 4,403 road accident super-hotspots across the entire country
  • No state has adopted it yet, but talks have begun

A road accident does not wait for an ambulance. The ambulance, if it is to arrive on time, must already be waiting nearby.

That is the idea behind a nationwide ambulance map drawn by researchers at IIT Madras, which suggests where India’s ambulances should be stationed to reach road accident victims fastest, Professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian and his team told India Today Digital in an exclusive interview at the IIT Madras campus.

The map is not yet public. It proposes 4,237 ambulances, placed to cover 4,403 super-hotspots, the stretches of road where accidents keep happening.

WHAT IS IIT MADRAS'S AMBULANCE MAP?

A planning tool that decides where help should wait, before the accident.

The tool is called Dynamic Ambulance Positioning. Ambulance positioning is simply the choice of where an ambulance should wait between calls. The map was designed and developed by the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) and the Rehabilitation Bioengineering Group, known as RBG Labs, at IIT Madras, under Professor Balasubramanian, the team said.

The tool was designed and developed by CoERS and RBG Labs at IIT Madras, under Professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian. (Photo: IIT Madras via special arrangement)

The same group conceived the national road accident database of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

The team has also developed IntelliSeat, a smart driver’s seat that senses fatigue from the way a person sits and warns them before a crash, so its work spans both preventing road accidents and responding to them.

Professor Balasubramanian was careful about what the map is. "I am not saying it is right or wrong," he told India Today Digital. A local officer would still have to judge each spot. If a no-entry rule bars a position, he said, the ambulance could simply be moved to the other side of the road. "IIT Madras has these suggested base locations, which can be adopted," he said.

HOW MANY PEOPLE DIE IN ROAD ACCIDENTS IN INDIA?

More than 1.6 lakh a year, the latest official release shows.

In 2022, 4,61,312 road accidents killed 1,68,491 people in India, according to a government release based on police data. National highways accounted for 32.94 per cent of the accidents and 36.22 per cent of the deaths.

WHAT IS THE GOLDEN HOUR AFTER A ROAD ACCIDENT?

The hour in which prompt care is most likely to save a life.

The Motor Vehicles Act defines it as the hour after a traumatic injury, during which there is the highest likelihood of preventing death by providing prompt medical care. Trauma care, in plain words, is emergency treatment for serious injuries. Researchers note that the idea is debated, but a peer-reviewed study of fatal crashes in Delhi says it is widely understood that rapid transfer to a medical facility improves outcomes.

The golden hour is the hour after a traumatic injury when prompt medical care is most likely to prevent death. (Representative Photo: Getty Images)

That study found that, over four years, no fatal crash site in the city was more than 45 minutes from a hospital. Yet it measured only the journey to the hospital, and its authors cautioned that the result holds only if a vehicle is available at the moment of the crash. Getting that vehicle to the victim is the gap Professor Balasubramanian wants the map to address.

"When everything fails, I need to have great trauma care," he said. "I need to know where to position an ambulance." The second half of the puzzle, he said, is which hospital to go to. "If I have a head injury, going to a hospital where a neurosurgeon is not there is a waste of time." That question is the subject of separate work.

HOW DOES THE AMBULANCE MAP WORK?

Accident records go in, and a map of waiting points comes out.

The model was fed the state and district of each crash, its location, date and time, national highway records provided by the road transport ministry in September 2023, total deaths and the severity of the crash, the team said.

Planners can filter IIT Madras’s ambulance map by state, district, day of the week and three-hour block of the day. (Representative photo of an ambulance: Getty Images)

Think of each past accident as a pin on a map. Where the pins crowd together, danger lives. From such records, the tool draws super-hotspots as shaped patches, called polygons, on a digital map of India. Ambulances are then placed on and around them. A screenshot of the tool reviewed by India Today Digital shows Tamil Nadu, with 541 super-hotspot polygons and 497 unique ambulances. Along the road corridor running from Tambaram towards Chengalpattu, the purple stretches of hotspot and the red ambulance icons sit close together.

Planners can filter the map by state, district, day of the week and three-hour block of the day. The professor said most accidents cluster in the evening and the early morning, a pattern the time filters let planners study. The tool can also mark tertiary, secondary and primary hospitals, meaning the most advanced, mid-level and first-contact facilities. Buttons measure distances and download the results as a spreadsheet.

HOW MANY AMBULANCES DOES INDIA NEED FOR ROAD ACCIDENTS?

The map's answer is 4,237 at the minimum.

The tool labels its total the minimum number of ambulances required for vehicular trauma, which means injuries from vehicle crashes. Nationwide, it counts 4,237 unique ambulances and 4,403 super-hotspots. In Tamil Nadu, the screen reads 497. These are the research team's own estimates, not a government norm.

HAS ANY STATE ADOPTED THE AMBULANCE MAP?

Not yet, but talks are on.

No state is using it today, the team said. It is under discussion for implementation as part of the data-driven hyperlocal interventions programme, which favours low-cost fixes tailored to a place over expensive, sweeping ones.

No state uses IIT Madras’s ambulance map yet, but the locations computed for Tamil Nadu are under consideration there, the team said. (Representative photo: Getty Images)

Tamil Nadu has used a similar approach with data from EMRI, the team said, and the locations computed by IIT Madras are under consideration there. EMRI is the agency that runs the 108 ambulance service in the state, under a public-private partnership.

The map will not be released to the public, the team said. It is meant for state governments to use in planning. The team did not name an outside expert who could judge the model independently, saying it is still being discussed with the states.

CAN THE AMBULANCE MAP SAVE MORE LIVES?

It is too early to count, and the team says so.

The team said it cannot yet tell by how much the map cuts the time taken to reach victims. That would need the earlier positions of ambulances and their travel histories.

To calculate how many more people would reach help within the golden hour, it would need real-time counts of demand and the ambulance cycle time, the time an ambulance takes to finish a trip and become free again.

So, for now, the map is a careful proposal, not a proven cure. Its worth will be known when a state parks its ambulances where the map suggests and counts the minutes that follow. A siren is only as fast as the place it starts from.

- Ends