Two-Step Optimization for Spatial Accessibility Improvement: A Case Study of Health Care Planning in Rural China

A recent advancement in location-allocation modeling formulates a two-step approach to a new problem of minimizing disparity of spatial accessibility. Our field work in a health care planning project in a rural county in China indicated that residents valued distance or travel time from the nearest hospital foremost and then considered quality of care including less waiting time as a secondary desirability. Based on the case study, this paper further clarifies the sequential decision-making approach, termed "two-step optimization for spatial accessibility improvement (2SO4SAI)." The first step is to find the best locations to site new facilities by emphasizing accessibility as proximity to the nearest facilities with several alternative objectives under consideration. The second step adjusts the capacities of facilities for minimal inequality in accessibility, where the measure of accessibility accounts for the match ratio of supply and demand and complex spatial interaction between them. The case study illustrates how the two-step optimization method improves both aspects of spatial accessibility for health care access in rural China.