An Enhanced Variable Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Method for Measuring Spatial Accessibility to Residential Care Facilities in Nanjing

Jianhua Ni, Jinyin Wang, Yikang Rui, Tianlu Qian and Jiechen Wang
Additional contact information
Jianhua Ni: Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Jinyin Wang: Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Yikang Rui: Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Tianlu Qian: Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Jiechen Wang: Department of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Civil administration departments require reliable measures of accessibility so that residential care facility shortage areas can be accurately identified. Building on previous research, this paper proposes an enhanced variable two-step floating catchment area (EV2SFCA) method that determines facility catchment sizes by dynamically summing the population around the facility until the facility-to-population ratio (FPR) is less than the FPR threshold (FPRT). To minimize the errors from the supply and demand catchments being mismatched, this paper proposes that the facility and population catchment areas must both contain the other location in calculating accessibility. A case study evaluating spatial accessibility to residential care facilities in Nanjing demonstrates that the proposed method is effective in accurately determining catchment sizes and identifying details in the variation of spatial accessibility. The proposed method can be easily applied to assess other public healthcare facilities, and can provide guidance to government departments on issues of spatial planning and identification of shortage and excess areas.

Keywords: two-step floating catchment area (2FCA) method; spatial accessibility; residential care facility; catchment size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/11/14490/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/11/14490/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:11:p:14490-14504:d:58796

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().