Spatial Modeling and Site Selection of Hospital by Integrating the New Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods, BWM, and WASPAS (Case study: District 2 of Tehran)

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.