TITLE:
Site Suitability Evaluation for Sustainable Distribution of Hospital Using Spatial Information Technologies and AHP: A Case Study of Upper Egypt, Aswan City
AUTHORS:
Asmaa H. Ahmed, Hatem Mahmoud, Abdel Monteleb M. Aly
KEYWORDS:
Site Suitability Evaluation, Geographic Information System (GIS), MCDSS, Hospital Sitting, Spatial Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geographic Information System,
Vol.8 No.5,
October
28,
2016
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.