ایمان زندی

Making a balance between the demand for healthcare services and the response to it requires the operation of new hospitals. But the important problem is finding the optimal for the construction of a hospital. The present research used a mixed method for determining the optimal location for a hospital in District 2 of Tehran. The mixed method is based on the Geospatial Information System (GIS), Best-Worst Method (BWM), and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods, WASPAS, and TOPSIS. Fewer pairwise comparisons in the weighting process of the proposed method have increased the accuracy and reliability of decision-making results. The combination of spatial modeling and ranking has also reduced the search space for suitable places to build a hospital. For this purpose, after determining the appropriate criteria, the weighting process was carried out with BWM, and the spatial layer of each criterion was prepared using GIS. Based on the weighting results, the criteria of distance from existing hospitals and distance from healthcare centers have had the highest and lowest weight, respectively. In the next step, the land suitability map was prepared by combining the spatial layers. Almost 88% of the spatial modeling results corresponded with the realities of the region, and the western half, especially the southwestern part, for the construction of a new hospital, had a higher proportion than other parts. Finally, sites number 2, 5, and 8 among 11 candidate sites were determined as the most optimal places for the construction of a new hospital in the studied area. It is suggested that one or more hospitals should be built in the designated optimal sites in accordance with the population living in areas without optimal access to hospital facilities so that in addition to improving health spatial equity, the cost of citizens’ access to hospitals could be reduced.

Determining the optimal location for the construction of the hospital will increase citizens' satisfaction with health services and increase their quality of life. The aim of the present study is to determine the optimal location for the construction of a hospital in the second district of Tehran’s metropolis. For this purpose, an integrated methodology including GIS, SWARA weighting method, and COPRAS ranking method has been presented. SWARA and COPRAS multi-criteria decision-making methods are among the best methods and have received less attention in the field of determining the optimal location of the hospital in combination with the GIS. The results of the weighting method showed that the criteria of distance to existing hospitals and the geospatial distribution of PM2.5 particles are the most and least important criteria in the decision-making process of the optimal location of the hospital, respectively. The results of geospatial modeling showed that the southwestern parts of the district have a very high potential for hospital construction and almost 48% of the region has the potential to build a hospital. In other words, there is no spatial justice for the citizens of half of the region in using the medical services of the hospitals. The results of ranking candidate sites showed that sites 5 and 6 were the most suitable places to build a new hospital in the second district. According to the research results, the weighting method used has the same accuracy as the fashionable weighting method of the analytic hierarchical process, despite the executive and computational complexity.

Spatial equity of urban health (USEH) is closely related to quality-of-life standards and urban development. Its evaluation is very important in the performance of public health and urban planning.  The aim of this research is to develop an approach to prepare and evaluate the USEH map using two data sets including reference location information and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI).  To determine the accuracy of the maps obtained from both types of data sets. This research was carried out in district 6 of Tehran metropolis. In this research, the effective criteria of the amount of USEH were first determined. The criteria map was prepared with spatial analysis and multi-criteria decision-making, and the final USEH map was prepared by combining the criteria map. To validate the prepared map, the USEH map was again produced based on the VGI information provided by the citizens and compared with the map obtained from the reference data. The amount of USEH for citizens is classified into 5 levels, from very suitable to very unsuitable. Based on the USEH map obtained from the reference data, approximately 62% of the study area has good or very good spatial equity. Comparison of the VGI map with the reference map showed a 72% match. Determining and evaluating USEH for different regions using new methods and technologies is a fundamental step to help health decision-makers in order to manage and allocate resources. It is expected that the results of the present research will be considered an essential criterion for decision-making in the field of health and increasing spatial equity in citizens' enjoyment of health facilities and components.

The flood is the most important natural disaster that causes human and financial losses every year, then its management is very important. The most basic step in flood disaster management is the preparation of a flood susceptibility map, which integrating the geospatial information system and multi-criteria decision making is an efficient approach to handle it. In order to spatially model flood susceptibility, the present study has presented an approach of fusion the weights of the effective criteria on flood susceptibility using the Dempster-Shafer information fusion theory (DST). The purpose of the fusion of the weights of the criteria is to increase reliability, reduce the uncertainty of the weighting process, and increase the accuracy of flood susceptibility modeling. The present research has presented a hybrid weighting method by integrating the results of two weighting methods (Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Best-Worst Method (BWM)). The hybrid weighting methods of previous researches are mainly based on simple mathematical operators, and complex operators such as DST used in the present research are less used. The results of the fusion of the weights obtained from the two weighting methods of AHP and BWM indicate the very high weight of the flow accumulation criterion (0.437) and the very low weight of the vegetation index criterion (0.004). Comparing the results of the research with the facts of the studied area showed that the presented hybrid weighting approach with 96% accuracy Compared to each of the basic weighting methods used, is of higher performance. Also, the susceptibility modeling resulting from the new BWM weighting method has been more accurate compared to the common method of the AHP. According to the results of the research, more than 92% of the studied area has moderate to high flood susceptibility and less than 8% of the area has less than moderate susceptibility, which indicates that the studied area is prone to flooding.

Hospitals are among the most important service centers, and the selection of the optimal site for them is a very important (yet complex) undertaking, as it can bring about optimal spatial distribution of hospitals and can make them optimally accessible for citizens. In the present study, in order to optimally locate hospitals in District 5 of Tehran metropolis, a combination of the geographical information system, objective weighting methods, and multi-criteria decision making method was used. The geographical information system was used to analyze and manage the optimal hospital locating criteria, the CRITIC weighting method was implemented to account for the correlation between the criteria, and Shannon's entropy method was used to model the existing uncertainty in the criteria. CODAS multi-criteria decision making method was used due to its novelty and the evaluation of alternatives based on two criteria. Based on the results obtained from CRITIC weighting method, distance from health centers, and based on the results of Shannon's entropy method, distance from industrial areas were the most important optimal hospital locating criteria. The results of ranking the candidate sites using CRITIC-CODAS and Shannon’s entropy-CODAS were almost the same, and both methods identified the sites on the western side of the District (that did not have any hospital) as the appropriate sites. The results of the study indicated the high accuracy of combined objective weighting and multi-criteria decision making methods in optimal locating of the hospitals. It might be asserted that these methods can replace thematic weighting methods such as analytical hierarchy process.

Healthcare is one of the most important urban services and proper access to healthcare centers is critical. Determining the hospital’s prospect location is a difficult problem of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) improves this decision. In this study, integration of GIS and MCDM was used in order to determine the prospective location of the hospital in the fifth district of Tehran. For this purpose, firstly, the effective criteria in the process of determining the prospect location of the hospital was selected by reviewing the literature and expert's opinions, and the spatial layer of each criterion was prepared. Then, ten sites in this district were selected and the criteria values were calculated for each. Then, the criteria weights were determined by the Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) weighting method. Weighting results showed that the seismic vulnerability was the most effective criterion in the decision-making process. In the next step, the sites were evaluated and ranked by two MCDM methods, that is, the Combinative Distance-based Assessment (CODAS) and the Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), and the results showed the similarity of the performance of the two methods. The ranking results of the two methods showed that sites No. 7 and 1 were the most suitable and the most unsuitable place to build a new hospital, respectively. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the ranking, the ranking results of the two methods were compared with the ranking performed by experts. Evaluation of the accuracy of the methods showed that the CODAS method for selecting the prospect location of the hospital has higher accuracy than the VIKOR method.

Hospitals are among the most essential human services whose role in the health of the citizens is very important. One of the important issues related to hospitals in developed cities is determining the optimal location for their construction. In this study, in order to select the optimal hospital location, a combination of expert opinions, GIS, and MCDM was used. For this purpose, 12 criteria were selected for the spatial modeling of the potential areas of hospital establishment, and then the weight of each criterion was calculated using the weighting method of Analytic Network Process (ANP). Then, a map of the potential areas for the hospital establishment was prepared and 11 sites in the potential areas were selected. In the next step, the weight of each criterion was determined again using Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method. Then, by the integration of two weighting methods, i.e., ANP and CRITIC, with two MCDM methods, i.e., EDAS and VIKOR, these sites were ranked. The results of spatial modeling showed that the western half of the district is more suitable for the construction of a new hospital than the other areas. According to the results of the ANP, the distance from hospitals, and according to the results of the CRITIC, the seismic vulnerability were the most important criterions in determining the optimal hospital location. Based on the ranking results coming from CRITIC-EDAS, CRITIC-VIKOR, and ANP-EDAS, the site No. 1, and according to the ranking results of the ANP-VIKOR, the site No. 8 have been the most suitable places for the construction of a new hospital. In the light of the results of the site evaluations by experts, CRITIC-EDAS and CRITIC-VIKOR methods are more accurate for hospital location selection.