Analysis of the geographical accessibility of neurosurgical emergency hospitals in Sapporo city using GIS and AHP

To improve the geographical accessibility of neurosurgical emergency hospitals for elderly people, we developed several alternative site plans for a new neurosurgical emergency hospital in Sapporo, Japan. Hospitals, population data, routes, and the numerical information for the Analytic Hierarchy Process computations were input into a Geographical Information System. Pairwise comparison revealed the following weights which were assigned to each of the four criteria: 0.674 for availability of hospital beds; 0.169 for the maximum road distance of the shortest routes; 0.101 for the elderly population within a 3-km radius; and 0.056 for the median road distance of the shortest routes. The alternative proposed could cover 4000 more elderly people in the 3-km radius of the hospitals. The integration of Geographical Information Systems and the Analytic Hierarchy Process constitutes a powerful tool for analysing traffic conditions in mid-sized cities and for suggesting city planning to improve prognosis of stroke.