Proceedings of the 2016 Winter Simulation Conference T. M. K. Roeder, P. I. Frazier, R. Szechtman, E. Zhou, T. Huschka, and S. E. Chick, eds. CHARACTERIZING EMERGENCY RESPONSES IN LOCALITIES WITH DIFFERENT SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURES USING EMSSIM Taesik Lee Kyohong Shin Hyun-Rok Lee Hyun Jin Lee Inkyung Sung Junseok Lee Il-Chul Moon Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering KAIST 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu Daejeon, 34141, KOREA Jangwon Bae Department of BigData Intelligence Research Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) 218 Gajeong-ro, Yuseong-gu Daejeon, 34129, KOREA ABSTRACT A well-functioning Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system is a fundamental requirement for saving lives in a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI). While the benefit of strengthening an EMS system is obvious, it is not so evident which components in an EMS system will most contribute to its performance. Using the Emergency Medical Service Simulation model (EMSSim), we test a hypothesis that the social infrastructure and geographic characteristics are key factors in determining the best strategy for the improvement of the EMS system of a particular region. Specifically, we investigate an MCI scenario in three regions – metropolitan, urban, and rural environments, and analyze the factors that will effectively enhance the EMS system in each of these regions. 1 INTRODUCTION The standard framework of disaster management involves the fours phases of emergency management: prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery (Petak 1985, Cova 1999). Prevention efforts focus on eliminating or reducing the chance of an incident occurring. As we cannot entirely prevent all future disaster incidents, mitigation is necessary to take actions that will minimize the consequence of unavoidable incidents. Preparedness refers to plans or procedures designed to guide response efforts when a disaster incident occurs. Along with the plans and procedures, preparedness efforts involves the training of emergency response personnel and general public to ensure those plans will be reliably followed in the disaster situation. When a disaster incident strikes, emergency response then puts the preparedness plan 978-1-5090-4486-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 1926