Comparative Study on Pedestrian Density Analysis and Spatial Efficiency Improvement for the Homogeneous Use of Public Space in Health Examination Centers
Suk-Tae Kim
Suk-Tae Kim, Professor, Department of Interior Architecture, Inje University, Republic of Korea, East Asian.
Manuscript received on 10 June 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 17 June 2019 | Manuscript Published on 22 June 2019 | PP: 1037-1044 | Volume-8 Issue-8S2 June 2019 | Retrieval Number: H11770688S219/19©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open-access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Due to the oversupply of medical services, competition in the medical field is fiercer than ever. Medical institutions now face a situation where they must actively cope with internal and external changes in the market. The first priority in this situation should be the patients’ satisfaction of service, as they are the customers. As one of the major medical institutions, health examination centers are relatively more influenced by spatial services such as congestion and time delays. The reasons are due to standardized costs as well as the fact that they are less affected by medical technology or medical equipment. However, health examination centers need to establish optimal alternatives in limited circumstances due to limited space and manpower. Furthermore, they need to shut down the system to improve the space. Discrete event simulation is receiving the spotlight as a solution to solve these issues. It is also actively used as an analysis tool for research on complex situations such as medical facilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify a way to reduce waiting time at the health examination center from a spatial perspective by using discrete event simulation. This study applied discrete event simulation to the floor plan of a health examination center at the time of opening and the current operating floor plan to compare and analyze the spatial efficiency according to the standard examination process. A new floor plan that improves the problems derived from the analysis process was then established to quantitatively and qualitatively verify the degree of improvement. As indicators for quantitative evaluation, we proposed and measured the examinee processing time(D), the average examination time per person(P), and the number of people waiting per examination item(q) for 100 people. We also performed an intuitive evaluation based on heat map analysis and the distribution of examination time. For the reliability of the analytical data, we repeated the simulation 10 times and applied the mean value. The current operating floor plan reduced the examination processing time for 100 people by 15.29% and the average examination time per person by 11.64% compared to the plan at the time of opening. We also found that the highly congested waiting area of the turnaround section in the south and east corridors moved to the east corridor and that the homogeneity of examination time per person improved. This improvement is considered as a result of experience from operating for a considerable period of time after opening. As a result of proposing and analyzing the improvement plan that partially adjusted the number of services and the layout of examination rooms to distribute the concentrated queues in the narrow corridor space, the examination time per person could be further reduced by 7.02% compared to the current operating floor plan. Moreover, the public space could be used more homogeneously due to the wider use of the waiting space(corridor). Discrete event simulation shows that preliminary verification, configuring alternatives, and preparing reliable improvement plans is possible even without stopping system operations. More optimized results can be obtained by applying this theory to the initial design stage in addition to maximizing cost savings. However, discrete event simulation is an operational (low-abstract) model that is applicable to a relatively small independent space. If we integrate modular DES with Strategic Models such as System Dynamic (SD), we may be able to perform macro-level analyses. Therefore, follow-up studies will be required in the future.
Keywords: Discrete Event Simulation, Health Examination Center, Complex system, Pedestrian Model, Pedestrian Density, Examinee Queue.
Scope of the Article: Predictive Analysis