1. EXPANDING EMS FACILITIES
IN MIDDLESEX COUNTY, NJ
ABSTRACT
This memo analyzes and discusses the best
suited sites within Middlesex county to expand
the current EMS facilities, underpinned by the
growth of Community Paramedicine Programs
nationwide
By: Andrew Pagano
Topics in GIS, Final Project
2. Middlesex County Executive Summary
Middlesex county is located in north-central New Jersey,
located strategically along the Raritan River and between
New York and Philadelphia. The county’s estimated 2015
population is 840,900, making it the second-most populated
county in New Jersey. New Brunswick serves as the county
seat and along with the county itself developed a strong
propensity for trading through their port hub in the early
colonial era, whereby Middlesex county played an
important role in the American Revolutionary war having
served as a camp to both English and Colonial troops.
Notable names such as George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin and several notable revolutionary figures
in history spent much of the war within the
borders of Middlesex county. Middlesex county is
well served by a mixture of major transportation
infrastructure including: New Jersey turnpike (I-
95), I-287, Route 18, among others. New Jersey
Transit also currently runs 3 commuter rail lines
through Middlesex county through their Raritan Valley line, Northeast Corridor line and New
Jersey Coast line, with Northeast Corridor being
the most prominent in ridership. Within the
theme of health, Robert Wood Johnson, St.
Peter’s University Hospital, JFK Medical Center
and Raritan Bay Medical Center are the primary
Hospitals within the county. These facilities also
double as the some of the largest employers in
the county, employing several thousand at each
facility respectively. Following the industrial age and leading to present day, Middlesex now
3. serves as the location of Johnson and Johnson’s Headquarters, as well as the primary campus
for Rutgers University. The largest non-
healthcare employers in the county
currently are Rutgers University, Bristol-
Myers Squibb, Merrill Lynch & Company,
Johnson & Johnson and Prudential
Insurance Company, to name a few.
Current Facilities
For this analysis, EMS stations
dataset consists of any location
where emergency medical
services (EMS) personnel are
stationed or based out of, or
where equipment that such
personnel use in carrying out
their jobs is stored for ready
use. Ambulance services are
included even if they only
provide transportation
services, but not if they are
located at, and operated by, a
hospital. If an independent
ambulance service or EMS
provider happens to be
collocated with a hospital, it
will be included in this dataset.
The dataset includes both
4. private and governmental entities. Since the emergence of Paramedicine programs, some of
the implementation of will require expansion of the actual facilities where these Paramedicine
programs are based out of. With these community-based programs, paramedics will be able to
go above and beyond their routine parameters of emergency response and transport roles in
ways that facilitate more appropriate use of emergency healthcare and allow underserved
populations enhanced access to primary care. Community Paramedicine programs are usually
designed with the intent of addressing specific issues that exist at the local level and overall use
local linkages and collaborations in order to ultimately reduce the cost of healthcare to
community while still providing emergency medical services and other healthcare and social
services.
Candidate Site Selections
Current Selected sites for expansion or construction of additional EMS Facilities are as follows in
no particular ranked order:
1. Cranbury Volunteer First Aid Squad
2. Monroe Municipal Ambulance
3. Robert Wood Johnson Medics
4. Spotswood Emergency Medical Services
5. Milltown Rescue Squad
6. Sayreville Emergency Squad
7. New Brunswick Fire Department Engine Company 1/Ladder Company 1
8. Metuchen First Aid Squad
9. Woodbridge Fire Department Station 1
10. Dunellen Fire Department
5. Demand was defined as municipalities
within proximity (in length) to nearest
facility. Population of these facilities was
selected as a weight for the location
allocation to be based on when selecting
the most viable candidate EMS site for
expansion. I chose sites 3,5 and 7 due to
several factors including average net
property value from Mod 4 tax property
dataset, average land value, average
improvement value-which was obtained
simply by subtracting the average net
property value from the land value, the
average parcel size (measured in acres)
and most frequent appearance of zoning
Classifications-Residential overwhelmingly dominated this category. I set criteria of only
accepting sites that averaged .5 acres, tried to keep net property value under $200,000 and
improvement value under $100,000 since we are simulating the expansion of a property, which
would warrant an understanding of the known differences in costs of land vs. actual structure.
6. 10 Candidate Sites Selected
From this selection of 10
sites, a 1 mile buffer was
created to gather information
with respect to the current
property environment.
Calculations were made
gathering information like
Average property value, land
values, most frequent
property class.
Site Number Average Net Property value Average Improvement value Average Land value Average Parcel size (Acres) (Mode) Property Class
1 972,371.34$ 637,493.73$ 334,877.61$ 3.127 2 (Residential)
2 311,529.02$ 214,214.87$ 97,314.15$ 0.735 2 (Residential)
3 196,919.67$ 128,909.55$ 68,010.12$ 6.760 2 (Residential)
4 267,425.62$ 139,345.25$ 128,080.36$ 0.721 2 (Residential)
5 190,858.44$ 105,551.52$ 85,306.92$ 0.620 2 (Residential)
6 318,373.89$ 250,197.38$ 68,176.51$ 0.246 2 (Residential)
7 183,122.16$ 118,777.25$ 64,344.91$ 0.659 2 (Residential)
8 228,740.59$ 119,131.77$ 109,608.82$ 0.333 2 (Residential)
9 110,113.29$ 78,125.90$ 31,987.39$ 0.259 2 (Residential)
10 153,814.78$ 83,982.66$ 69,832.12$ 0.309 2 (Residential)
Selected Sites
7. 3 Chosen Sites for Suitability Analysis
Final Site Selection
I chose Site 7 as the preferred
site due to several factors
related to the parameters set for
the suitability analysis. The MUA
selected for my suitability
analysis was “to preserve the
physical environment and
cultural environment. After
procuring all the data from NJ’s
Department Environmental
Protection, I was able to begin
pre-processing and setting up
the data for rasterization. The
Watershed Management Areas 9
and 10. From the website, I
acquired the required data for
the 2 areas, including current
wetlands, 10-meter DEM
datasets, Known Contaminated
Sites for the state, Natural Heritage Priority Sites (from NJGIN website).
Site Number Average Net Property value Average Improvement value Average Land value Average Parcel size (Acres) (Mode) Property Class
1 972,371.34$ 637,493.73$ 334,877.61$ 3.127 2 (Residential)
2 311,529.02$ 214,214.87$ 97,314.15$ 0.735 2 (Residential)
3 196,919.67$ 128,909.55$ 68,010.12$ 6.760 2 (Residential)
4 267,425.62$ 139,345.25$ 128,080.36$ 0.721 2 (Residential)
5 190,858.44$ 105,551.52$ 85,306.92$ 0.620 2 (Residential)
6 318,373.89$ 250,197.38$ 68,176.51$ 0.246 2 (Residential)
7 183,122.16$ 118,777.25$ 64,344.91$ 0.659 2 (Residential)
8 228,740.59$ 119,131.77$ 109,608.82$ 0.333 2 (Residential)
9 110,113.29$ 78,125.90$ 31,987.39$ 0.259 2 (Residential)
10 153,814.78$ 83,982.66$ 69,832.12$ 0.309 2 (Residential)
Site 1
Site 2
Site 3
8. Afterward, I had to preprocess the data. For the DEM data, I mosaicked them using Data
Management ToolsRasterMosaic
to New Raster, by 32-bit floating
because this is the common
characteristics of the two datasets.
I created a 1-mile buffered area
from the selected EMS facilities and
clipped all SUA features to create
the area study. I then clipped all
the rest of the datasets acquired
from the website by this area study
shape file.
The next step I had to do was to
create each SUA for my analysis. I
based each of these SUAs on the
Objectives preassigned by the
problem set. There are 4 SUAs,
which are:
SUA 1: Preserve the wetlands areas in the county
SUA 2: Preserve steep slopes (greater than 10 percent) within the county’s municipal
peripheries
SUA 3: Discourage the construction of properties near known Contaminated sites
SUA 4: Preserve the historical environment by preservation of existing historical properties
9. From these SUA’s I was able to run
suitability analysis on all three sites and
determine the following: Site 3 seemed to
be one of the sites that fell as the least-to-
moderately suitable candidate, a firm third
choice. After analyzing some of the pre-
processed data, the area turned out to
have the most acreage of wetlands, with
1166.73 acres of wetlands, the area is
saturated in terms of wetland presence,
which seemed to have significantly
diminished suitability, given that the
weighted overlay used wetland avoidance
(within 750 ft) as a 30% weight criteria.
None other than the preservation of slopes
was weighted identically at 30%. Contaminated Sites were chosen to be weighted as 20% since,
only in states like New Jersey are people slightly more willing to build on these sites, given
remediation has occurred. This is not to say that a 20% weight is to be taken lightly, as we the
choice of weight was selected simply to satisfy the required strength of methodology needed
for the former two. Lastly, this site contained the 4 historical sites and structures, thus with a
20% weight for the avoidance of construction within 750 ft of these sites, some of the areas in
the site seemed to have been non-suitable or moderately suitable at best.
10. Site 5 dialed in as the second best site based
on the level of other areas within the site
that were suitable for development. Given
the lesser-presence of wetlands and
contaminated sites, more areas of the site
were suitable for expansion of the facility.
The weights used were all consist for the
three sites; however, the presence of slopes
over 10%, for example, significantly
diminished the suitability cutting through
the middle and sides of site 5 within 750 ft.
Site 5 also suffered from both having 17
historical sites and having the largest
number of contaminated sites than all three
combined, with 13 contaminated sites in the
1-mile buffer as compared to site 3 and site 7 both having 3
contaminated sites each for total of 6 in both combined.
11. Alas, site 7 ended up being the
quintessential last but not even remotely
least in the site selection. Site 7 fell in the
middle in terms of wetlands presence,
with 325.54 acres of wetlands, compared
to 1166.73 acres of wetlands in site 3 and
214. 41 in site 5; however, as stated
above, site 7 contained only 3
contaminated sites and 4 historic sites.
With the limited number of constraints
brought about these as well as limited
amount of steep slopes, the site had the
largest volume of land that was highly
suitable for site expansion or infield
development. Finally, the actual facility of
the current EMS expansion was located on a parcel located in a zone with very high suitability
for development under the aforementioned parameters of the Environmental MUA and SUAs.
