Spatial Distribution Of Facilities Research Articles

A comparative study for accessing primary healthcare between planning assessment and actual utilization for older adults: a case from Dalian City, China.

As China has rapidly evolved into an aging society, the Chinese government has developed a community-oriented primary healthcare system to vigorously expedite the transfer of primary health care (PHC) from higher-level hospitals to community health centers (CHCs). However, current planning standards for CHCs have not considered the heterogeneity of older adults in supply-demand services, such that the areas with severe aging may comprise of underestimated levels of accessibility. This study focuses on the gap in PHC access between planning assessment and actual utilization for older adults. We conducted an empirical study in the city area of Dalian based on the check-in and survey data from CHCs during the COVID-19 pandemic. A comparison model was built to calculate matching probability using a modified Gaussian Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (G2SFCA) method. As indicated by the results, the communities in the primary healthcare shortage area (PHCSA) increased 6.8% by considering the heterogeneity of older adults; these communities with underserved PHC were ignored by the current planning assessment. Based on the comparison of actual and theoretical accessibility for older adults, we found that the average matching probability was about 76.6%, which means approximately a quarter of older adults have been misestimated the accessibility of PHC. Further analysis for the older adults with mismatched accessibility showed two causes of the gap, one is the lack of connection between the spatial distribution of facilities and the allocation of service supply, and the other is the subjective cross-catchment visit to CHCs for older adults.

Reconstructing human activities via coupling mobile phone data with location-based social networks

In the era of big data, the ubiquity of location-aware portable devices provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand inhabitants’ behavior and their interactions with the built environments. Among the widely used data resources, mobile phone data is the one passively collected and has the largest coverage in the population. However, mobile operators cannot pinpoint one user within meters, leading to the difficulties in activity inference. To that end, we propose a data analysis framework to identify user’s activity via coupling the mobile phone data with location-based social networks (LBSN) data. The two datasets are integrated into a Bayesian inference module, considering people’s circadian rhythms in both time and space. Specifically, the framework considers the pattern of arrival time to each type of facility and the spatial distribution of facilities. The former can be observed from the LBSN Data and the latter is provided by the points of interest (POIs) dataset. Taking Shanghai as an example, we reconstruct the activity chains of 1,000,000 active mobile phone users and analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of each activity type. We assess the results with some official surveys and a real-world check-in dataset collected in Shanghai, indicating that the proposed method can capture and analyze human activities effectively. Next, we cluster users’ inferred activity chains with a topic model to understand the behavior of different groups of users. This data analysis framework provides an example of reconstructing and understanding the activity of the population at an urban scale with big data fusion.

THE LOCATIONAL MEASURE IN THE PLANNING OF QARIAH MOSQUES

Public facilities are vital to contributing positively to people’s quality of life. Facilities play an important role in cities by providing public services to communities. Therefore, planning equitable public facilities is crucial for planners to ensure that every citizen has equal access to the planned public facilities. Scholars have conducted various studies to assess the location and distribution of public facilities. Spatial equity is one aspect of locational measures used by scholars to determine the accessibility and spatial distribution of facilities in relation to the user’s location. Previous studies by researchers have focused on public facilities such as medical facilities, parks, and schools. However, there have been limited studies that evaluate the spatial equity of religious facilities such as mosques. Therefore, this study attempts to assess the location of qariah mosques (mosques of local jurisdiction) based on the spatial equity concept by measuring their spatial distribution and accessibility. The present study utilised a Geographical Information System (GIS) and used descriptive and statistical analyses to examine the spatial equity of 418 mosques in Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. GIS data was collected for this study, which includes mosques, populations, and mukim (township or sub-district) boundaries. The study used aggregated data from the population to identify the spatial pattern and spatial distribution of accessibility to mosques. The data was analysed using the container index and local indicators of spatial association (LISA) to assess the accessibility and spatial equity. This method utilised GIS capabilities to explore the spatial relationship between mosques and population characteristics. By adopting this approach, the findings of the study will reveal communities with limited accessibility to mosques.

Appraisal of Market Structure: An Empirical Study of Aleshinloye Market, Ibadan, Nigeria

Market influences the economy form and structure of urban communities which makes it an integral part of any state or country. The study focuses on the appraisal of the Market Structure of Aleshinloye Market, Ibadan, Nigeria. The primary data used were sourced from Coordinates with the aid of GPS to know spatial distribution of facilities, administering questionnaires to traders in the market, and direct observation. Direct count from Google Earth Imagery of the study area revealed that it consists of 274 buildings which comprises of 2,806 lockup shops and 997 open stalls, a convenient sample size of 3% of the shops were considered, which amount to 114 respondents. Questionnaire distribution follows the capacity ratio of the types of shops (lockup shop and open stall). Multistage sampling technique was used by first stratified into zones after which systematic random sampling was used for administering questionnaire to respondents. Two indices were developed: ‘Facility Availability/Adequacy Index’ (FAI) and ‘Facility Functionality Index’ (FFI); these were used to measure the availability/adequacy and functionality of the facilities in Aleshinloye market. The study observed that ‘Shop and stall’ have the highest FAI of 4.19, while drainage, toilet and security have the FAI’s of 4.15, 4.10 and 3.97 respectively. In terms of functionality, Shop and stall (FFI=4.12), road (FFI=4.03), drainage (FFI=4.00) and security (FFI=3.95). The Nearest Neighbour Analysis indicates that the spatial distribution pattern of facilities in Aleshinloye market is random.The study concluded that medical facility like the Primary Health Center which is absent should be made available, in case of an emergency. Market users and stakeholders should engage themselves in community development programs to maintain available facilities. Also, signage should be erected in strategic places for navigation. On-street sellers and hawkers who display their goods on the road should be encouraged to purchase stalls to avoid encroaching into the right of way. A number of stall was located nearly directly under high tension electrical wires which negate planning set back standard. A better method for waste disposal should be devised and burning during market hours should be prohibited. Keywords: Landuse Analysis, Urban Market, Market structure, Market facilities, Modern Market DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-11-06 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

Geographical Accessibility to District Hospitals/Medical Laboratories for Comprehensive Antenatal Point-of-Care Diagnostic Services in the Upper East Region, Ghana

BackgroundAccess to referral healthcare facilities from primary healthcare (PHC) clinics for diagnostic services is critical for improving maternal health outcomes. We described the geographical distribution and accessibility to district hospitals/medical laboratories for comprehensive antenatal point-of-care (POC) diagnostic services in the Upper East region (UER), Ghana. MethodsWe assembled detailed spatial data on 100 participated PHC clinics in our previous survey, their nearest referral district hospitals/medical laboratories, and landscape features influencing journeys in the UER. These were used in a geospatial model to estimate actual distance and travel time from a PHC facility to the nearest referral health facility for antenatal POC diagnostic services. Spatial distribution of the facilities was determined using spatial auto-correlation tool run in ArcMap 10.4.1. We employed Stata V14 for all other analysis. FindingsOf the 100 PHC clinics included in the analysis, only 15% were located less than 10 km to their nearest referral health facilities. The mean distance ± standard deviation from a PHC clinic to the nearest referral district hospital/medical laboratory for comprehensive antenatal POC diagnostic services was 7.0 km ± 4.9. Whilst the mean travel time using a motorized tricycle speed of 20 km/h to the nearest referral health facility for comprehensive antenatal POC diagnostic was 14.0 min ± 8.8. The spatial auto-correlation results for the PHC clinics suggested that the PHC clinics were spatially distributed at random rather than clustered (MI = 0.01, z-score = 0.33, p = 0.74). Whereas the spatial distribution of the referral health facilities suggested that the hospitals or medical laboratories were spatially dispersed (MI = −0.69 z-score = −2.05, p = 0.04). InterpretationAlthough there is moderate geographical accessibility to district hospitals/medical laboratories for comprehensive antenatal diagnostic services in the UER, targeted improvement of POC diagnostic services in PHC clinics is recommended for improved maternal healthcare. FundingUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, College of Health Sciences Research Scholarship.

Residential Care in Los Angeles: evaluating the spatial distribution of facilities and neighbourhood access to care among older adults

ABSTRACTResidential care has increased in number of facilities and has grown in density in urban areas, yet it is disproportionately dispersed in cities and only beginning to meet the current long-term care need of older adults as an alternative to institutional and in-home care. California State Department of Social Services residential care facility data were linked with Los Angeles County census tract data to examine the spatial distribution of facilities through hot spot analysis of clusters of small and large facilities and zero-inflated negative binomial regression of census tract facility counts on older age and race groups, older disabled adults, and older adults in poverty in the area. The results show clusters of large facilities west of downtown Los Angeles and clusters of small facilities in the northern suburbs of the city in the San Fernando Valley. Increases in pre- and early-retired adults and older Hispanics in census tracts are associated with the greatest decreases in facility tract capacity in the area, whereas increases in the oldest old and older disabled adults are associated with the greatest increases. Understanding spatial disparities in residential care can help local agencies and developers plan and partner in more intentional and equitable development of facilities. The greatest opportunity for such development may lie in institutional tools for eldercare facility development such as the eldercare facility ordinance of Los Angeles and development of board and care facilities in residential zones of Los Angeles and other cities.

Analysis of human mobility patterns from GPS trajectories and contextual information

ABSTRACTHuman mobility is important for understanding the evolution of size and structure of urban areas, the spatial distribution of facilities, and the provision of transportation services. Until recently, exploring human mobility in detail was challenging because data collection methods consisted of cumbersome manual travel surveys, space-time diaries, or interviews. The development of location-aware sensors has significantly altered the possibilities for acquiring detailed data on human movements. Although this has spurred many methodological developments in identifying human movement patterns, many of these methods operate solely from the analytical perspective and ignore the environmental context within which the movement takes place. In this paper we attempt to widen this view and present an integrated approach to the analysis of human mobility using a combination of volunteered GPS trajectories and contextual spatial information. We propose a new framework for the identification of dynamic (travel modes) and static (significant places) behaviour using trajectory segmentation, data mining, and spatio-temporal analysis. We are interested in examining if and how travel modes depend on the residential location, age, or gender of the tracked individuals. Further, we explore theorised ‘third places’, which are spaces beyond main locations (home/work) where individuals spend time to socialise. Can these places be identified from GPS traces? We evaluate our framework using a collection of trajectories from 205 volunteers linked to contextual spatial information on the types of places visited and the transport routes they use. The result of this study is a contextually enriched data set that supports new possibilities for modelling human movement behaviour.

Spatial distribution of prehospital emergency medical services bases in Isfahan province in 2012 using GIS

Introduction: Human are constantly exposed to natural and non-natural disasters and when facing such problems, always try to seek a way out. In such situations, he/she would be in need of help from others particularly from rescue organizations such as emergency services. Thus, to provide such services in time, spatial distribution of facilities is of great importance. The spatial distribution of emergency medical services (EMS) units in Isfahan province would be studied in this article. Materials and Methods: This is a case report which describes the distribution of physical and human resources of prehospital emergency care bases. Based on available documents, the number of mentioned resources in different cities of the province was surveyed and then, using Google Earth and Geographic Information System (GIS) software, the density and coverage of the constructed facilities were shown. Results: The density and coverage of EMS units in the western province are more and in the eastern and northern parts including Khoor va biabanak, Nain, Ardestan, and Aran va Bidgol, the coverage is less due to vastity. Conclusion: Based on the results, allocation of resources in different cities of Isfahan province has great differences. Actually, the need to the resources must be determined and the emergency needs must be answered by equitable distribution of resources before entering the hospital in order to prevent further harms and costs.

The minimum p-envy location problem: a new model for equitable distribution of emergency resources

Equity is an important consideration in public services such as Emergency Medical Service (EMS) systems. In such systems not only equitability but also performance depends on the spatial distribution of facilities and resources. This paper proposes the minimum p-envy facility location model which aims to find optimal locations for facilities in order to balance customers’ perceptions of equity in receiving service. The model is developed and evaluated through the lens of EMS systems, where ambulances are located at facilities (stations) with the objective of minimizing the sum of “envy” among all demand zones (customer points) with respect to an ordered set of p operating stations weighted by the proportion of demand in each zone. The problem is formulated as an integer program, with priority weights assigned according the probability that an ambulance is available, which is estimated using the hypercube model. Because of the computational effort required to obtain solutions using commercially available software, a tabu search is developed to solve the problem. A case study using real-world data is presented. The performance of the proposed model is tested and compared to other location models such as the p-center and maximal-covering-location problems (MCLP).

On Equity in Providing Public Services

The performance of public services is determined to a large extent by the spatial distribution of facilities and resources that provide the service. Three measures of performance are discussed: efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. The last of these, equity, is recognized as being of growing importance, but has been generally neglected by management scientists. Different equitable formulas can be used for the spatial distribution of public services within a community. They are based on four general principles: equal payments, equal outputs, equal inputs, and equal satisfaction of demand. The application of these principles is illustrated by reference to municipal services. Mutual inconsistency among these formulas is evident, and is shown caused by the different values which underlie the choice of formulas. The choosing of values is, ultimately, a political process.