Supporting Emergency Medical Services Through Weather-Based Forecasting of Demand

Extreme heat events can have severe consequences for public health and place considerable additional pressure on healthcare systems. In particular, the resulting increase in the number of emergency calls can push emergency medical services (EMS) to their operational limits. At present, control centre staff largely rely on their personal experience when analysing weather data and assessing the impact on the EMS workload. The ForMed project (Forecasting impacts of extreme weather conditions on emergency medical services), funded by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), addresses exactly this gap. Its goal is the development and evaluation of statistical models to forecast heat-related impacts on EMS demand. This contribution presents key findings from the data analysis phase and provides an overview of a prototype dashboard.

The analysis and modelling are based on emergency dispatch records from the Berlin Fire Brigade covering the period 2012–2025. These were linked with temporal predictors, including day of week, time of day, and public holidays, as well as an archive of COSMO-DE-EPS and ICON-D2-EPS forecasts. Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were used to characterize the underlying dependencies. The central finding is an increase of 10–15% in EMS call volumes during strong heat events compared to climatological baseline conditions. This increase can lead to high demand on EMS, especially when accompanied by additional factors such as mass events or prolonged heat waves.

Building on these findings, a forecast dashboard has been developed that predicts EMS call volumes for the coming days based on current meteorological forecasts. The system is intended to enable operational planners to take anticipatory, quantitatively informed decisions. A prototype will be tested with the Berlin Fire Brigade's control centre in summer 2026 to evaluate its practical utility in an operational environment. Based on the outcome of this evaluation, it is planned to transfer the methodology to other EMS regions. Discussions with the fire department indicate that heat has played a minor role in planning up to now, but that, given the experience with climate change, there is now widespread interest in analyses of the impacts of heat.