Site Suitability Evaluation for Sustainable Distribution of Hospital Using Spatial Information Technologies and AHP: A Case Study of Upper Egypt, Aswan City

Abstract

Site selection for location of a hospital is one of the crucial policy-related decisions taken by the government. In upper Egypt, the cities suffer from a shortage and bad distribution of hospital site. The selection of the appropriate hospital site requires consideration of multiple alternative solutions and evaluation factor. We develop a Multi-Criteria Decision Support System (MCDSS) process that combines Geographical Information System (GIS) analysis with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and use this process to determine the optimum site for a new hospital in the Aswan urban area. Based on actual conditions Aswan city, we used three main factors and seven sub-factors. The main factors are urban, environmental and economic factors. An application adopting AHP process was developed to calculate weights of every factor. Spatial analysis in GIS was used to overlay and generate factors maps and suitability evaluation map. All maps are classified from 1 (low suitable) to 5 (high suitable) using spatial information technologies. The candidate sites are divided by best, good and unsuitable hospital areas. Best hospital site represents optimal sites; good hospital site can be used as back-up candidate sites. The study was found that best area (S3) is about 30%, and most of these are located in the south part of the study area; good area (S2) is about 58%, and most of these are located in the central part of the study area; unsuitable area (S1) is about 12%, and most of these are located in the Eastern and Western parts of the study area. Finally, the study ends with an assessment of proposed sites.