Case Study: The Dutch National Police achieves optimized helicopter capacity planning and up to 40% improved incident coverage with AIMMS

Dutch National Police Improves Capacity Planning for its Helicopter Fleet

The Dutch National Police’s Air Support and Aviation Police (LVP) faced a planning gap: strategic and operational decision-support systems existed separately—one for long-term helicopter base allocations and one for daily flight timing and routes—but there was no tool to allocate annual helicopter capacity, limiting fleet performance and efficient use of assets across regions.

A prototype developed at the University of Twente, built on an AIMMS model, combines crime data and police resources to simultaneously schedule surveillance flights and crews while balancing performance and equitable regional capacity. The solution reduced impractical routes, optimized crew shifts, enabled fair fleet distribution (at an acceptable ~20% performance trade-off), increased incident coverage in some areas by up to 40%, and improved priority coverage through better tactical planning.

The Dutch National Police