Emergencies that pose potential threats to our health, life, and properties can happen anywhere and anytime and may result in huge losses if they are not handled timely and effectively. An immediate response to emergencies is the key to mitigate these threats and losses. As the response time is largely dependent on the number and location of emergency facilities, the problem of how to determine the optimal number of emergency facilities and their best locations is of great strategic importance and of great interest to researchers. One of the most common approaches for researchers to address the emergency facility location problem is to model it as a discrete coverage-based emergency facility location problem. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of this problem, including mathematical models and their extensions and applications. In addition, the commonly used solution methods and some promising future research questions based on covering models are discussed.

对我们的健康、生命和财产构成潜在威胁的突发事件随时随地都可能发生，如果不及时有效处理，可能会造成巨大损失。对紧急情况的立即反应是减轻这些威胁和损失的关键。由于响应时间在很大程度上取决于应急设施的数量和位置，如何确定应急设施的最佳数量和最佳位置的问题具有重要的战略意义和研究人员的极大兴趣。研究人员解决应急设施位置问题的最常见方法之一是将其建模为基于离散覆盖的应急设施位置问题。本文对这个问题进行了全面的概述，包括数学模型及其扩展和应用。