7.5 Assignment

Choose a small area either of England or of another country for which you have used suitable data earlier in the course. Your study area should be preferably no bigger than the Southampton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) study area used in the separate practical exercise on location-allocation modelling (Note: you are strongly recommended not to use a large study area). You may find it easier to choose an urban study area, rather than a rural site. Prepare a spatial database for your study site that contains:

a. Health facility locations for your study area (e.g. general practice surgeries, or any other facilities you can find);

b. Some appropriate measure of demand for healthcare for your area (e.g. census or geodemographic data)

Using ArcGIS Online, set up a location-allocation problem relating to the closure of one or more healthcare facilities within your study area.

In a report of 1,800 words accompanied by appropriate illustrations, identify the optimal solution for the problem that you have described. Justify the approach that you have taken, and discuss its strengths and limitations, as well as the sensitivity of the final solution to the choice of proximity or demand metric.

Abstracts (not required), titles, tables, executive summaries, and text are all included in the word count. Appendices, reference list, acknowledgements are not included in the word count. Current practice is that any material submitted in excess of the published word limit is not assessed. Please submit your work online via eAssignment.