The correct estimation of ambulance travel time is an extremely important issue from the perspective of healthcare and the security of citizens. In some events, the threat to the health or life of an injured person increases with each minute of waiting for an ambulance. The authors of this article analyzed how ambulances travel throughout the entire Lesser Poland voivodeship in southern Poland. Based on the analysis of 300 million GPS records that were collected over several years from 300 ambulances, real ambulance speed characteristics were compiled for the most important cities in the region. The obtained results regarding ambulance speed characteristics were used to understand the correlation between ambulance speed, the density of the road network, and the built-up areas of a given city. Furthermore, the impact on the speed of ambulances of traffic, time of day, day of the week, or the season was also examined. The influence of the use of ambulances’ lights/sirens on travel time was also examined. The culmination of the research was the presentation of the theoretical foundations of coverage maps and a method of implementing them based on the determined speed characteristics. The presented studies show that the speed at which ambulances move is a very local phenomenon. Also, a relatively constant average speed of ambulances throughout the whole week was found. Moreover, a difference in speed between signaled and non-signaled ambulance trips was observed. The speed characteristics that were obtained were used as input data for the development of dynamic coverage maps, which are an invaluable tool for supporting the decisions of ambulance dispatchers.

从医疗保健和公民安全的角度来看，正确估计救护车的行程时间是一个极其重要的问题。在某些情况下，对受伤人员健康或生命的威胁随着等待救护车的每一分钟而增加。本文的作者分析了救护车如何在波兰南部的整个小波兰省内行驶。基于对多年来从 300 辆救护车收集的 3 亿条 GPS 记录的分析，编制了该地区最重要城市的真实救护车速度特征。获得的救护车速度特性结果用于了解救护车速度、道路网络密度和特定城市建成区之间的相关性。此外，还检查了交通、一天中的时间、一周中的哪一天或季节对救护车速度的影响。还检查了使用救护车灯/警报器对行驶时间的影响。研究的高潮是介绍覆盖图的理论基础以及基于确定的速度特性实施它们的方法。所提出的研究表明，救护车移动的速度是一种非常局部的现象。此外，还发现整周救护车的平均速度相对恒定。此外，观察到有信号和无信号的救护车行程之间的速度差异。获得的速度特性用作开发动态覆盖图的输入数据，