%0 Journal Article %A Bingqiu YAN %A Xiaolu GAO %A Jue JI %T Micro simulation and planning policies analysis for urban elderly care facilities: take Beijing as an example %D 2015 %R 10.18306/dlkxjz.2015.12.007 %J PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY %P 1586-1597 %V 34 %N 12 %X

The spatial planning of urban elderly care facilities in China is featured by great diversity and dynamic change of elderly needs brought by rapid ageing of the society and sharp transformation of population structure. This study addressed the planning issue of urban elderly care facilities. An agent-based simulation framework was presented. The differentiation of elderly service demand across time and space, the behavior rules of the elderly and caring facility agents and their interactions with the urban environments extracted from previous investigations and studies were used as input for the simulation model. Subsequently, a multi-agent simulation model was set up with Beijing as the case study area, enabling prediction of the demand and provision of elderly care facilities in the city during year 2010 and 2030. To facilitate evaluation of the planning policies for elderly care services, three indices were developed, the occupancy rate, bed number for 100 elderly, and spatial matching degree of facilities in relationship to older population, and they were applied to evaluation and analysis of the planning policies for elderly care facilities in Beijing. It was concluded that, agent-based simulation is a powerful approach for understanding the trend of elderly population and for handling the uncertainty and dynamics of elderly care needs, in addition to accommodating the spatial attributes of various factors. Analysis on the planning policies such as the "9064" scheme that confining the share of different kind of elderly care services and the total number of facility beds and the plan for facility sites revealed that, these policies will not play well without additional regulation. With these regulations alone, the occupancy rate of the facilities might decrease to an astonishing degree of 45% in 2030. To improve the planning policy, it was argued to regulate the proportion of facilities located in central city areas as well as the pricing, location and service standard of the elderly care facilities.

%U https://www.progressingeography.com/EN/10.18306/dlkxjz.2015.12.007