A decision support method for school relocation planning

Abstract

The number of children has been gradually decreasing in European and Asian developed countries. Schools have to be closed or integrated to keep a suitable educational environment and to ensure economical efficiency. School relocation planning, however, is not an easy process because it involves various sectors and professions. Due to the diversity of participants and ambiguity in plan evaluation, it takes quite a long time to reach a final agreement. To treat this problem, this paper proposes a new method of decision support for school relocation planning. The method aims to help the discussion of school relocation problem from various perspectives rather than directly suggest the candidates for the final decision. The school relocation problem is formulated as a capacitated set covering problem, and its solutions are analyzed to reveal the properties of the school relocation problem. Numerical measures are introduced to evaluate the effect of desirable conditions on school location. Schools are then divided into subgroups where relocation problems can be discussed independently. The method is applied to relocation planning of elementary schools in Chiba City, Japan. It illustrates a concrete usage of the method proposed and provides empirical findings.