Hospital site selection by integrating AHP and TOPSIS with GIS: a case study of Prayagraj, India

Determining the optimal hospital location is a challenging task for public administrators as it requires critical analysis of many factors that are directly associated with hospitals. This research aims to develop an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criterion Decision-Making (MCDM) for evaluating multiple criteria affecting to hospital and thus to perform hospital site selection accordingly. For solution, sixteen criteria are selected after literature which is further divided into four main criteria: socio-economic, geographical, infrastructure and environmental criteria. Analytical Hierarchy Procedure (AHP) is used to calculate the weights of each criterion. Based on each criterion weight and normalized map, hospital site suitability map is generated and thus eight alternative locations are selected. The result indicate that 18.74% area is very suitable for hospital site selection. Further, ranking of alternatives is determined by the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the effect of change in the weight of the criteria on the overall criteria ranking and the calculated suitability score. The proposed model not only help to take critical decisions on optimal hospital sites, but also added a new dimension for decision maker and experts to reach out the solution in terms of reliability, usability and efficiency.