Abstract
Taiwan is facing the dual severe social problems of an aging population coupled with a low birth rate. Aging has given rise to an urgent need for future long-term care and daytime care, while the low birth rate has led to a large number of vacant classrooms on campus. The government is actively developing the policy of reusing idle campuses as daily care centers for the aged. However, the implementation of this policy lacks a set of complete evaluation mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to propose a three-stage site selection assessment model to construct site selection assessment indicators, construct indicator weights using the analytic hierarchical process (AHP), and rank the campuses most suitable for transformation into daily care centers for the aged according to the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. The results showed that the convenience of family members’ transportation, access to medical treatment, service life of school buildings, barrier-free spaces, and ventilation condition are all key factors regarding the future transformation of vacant campus spaces into daily care centers. The assessment model could provide a reference to accelerate the decision-making benefits regarding the sustainable reuse of idle campus spaces.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization’s definition, a country enters an aging society when its population over 65 years of age exceeds 7% of the total population; if the ratio of elderly is over 14%, the country will become an aged society (World Health Organization [WHO], 2001)
Measurement of the final consistency ratio (C.R.) is to allow researchers to conclude whether the evaluations are analytic hierarchical process (AHP) is a decision-making method that decomposes a sufficiently consistent, which is calculated as the ratio of complex multi-criteria decision-making problem (MCDM) the consistency index (C.I.) and the random index (R.I.)
In order to meet the social development trend of aging and a low birth rate, and after considering the current number and potential demand of daily care centers for the aged in Taiwan, this study found that reusing vacant campuses as daily care centers for the aged is a win-win strategy for future policy promotion
Summary
According to the World Health Organization’s definition, a country enters an aging society when its population over 65 years of age exceeds 7% of the total population; if the ratio of elderly is over 14%, the country will become an aged society (World Health Organization [WHO], 2001). Taiwan entered an aging society in 1993 and officially became an aged society at the end of March, 2018 (Department of Statistics, Ministry of the Interior [DSMI], 2018). When the aging society appears, it is bound to generate future demand for long-term care. Taking Taipei City as an example, the number of people receiving long-term care in 2016 was about 120,000; currently there are only 15 daily care centers for the aged in Taipei City, and only 510 people can be accommodated. The urgency of the current demand for daily care centers for the aged is apparent. In order to increase the supply of long-term care services, the government has presented a new system of long-term care service subsidies and units to facilitate the establishment of daily care centers for the aged since 2018 (The Executive Yuan, 2018)
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