Impacts of Study Area Spatial Form on Co-location Quotient Analysis: Evidence From Medical Resources Distribution in Wuhan City

Abstract

BackgroundThere is a sharp contradiction between supply and demand of medical resources in provincial capitals of China. Understanding the spatial patterns of medical resources and identifying their spatial association and heterogeneity is a prerequisite to ensuring limited resources are allocated fairly and optimally, which, along with improvements to urban residents’ quality of life, is a key aim of healthy city planning. MethodLocalised co-location quotient (LCLQ) analysis has been used successfully to measure directional spatial associations and heterogeneity between categorical point data. Using point of interest data and the LCLQ method, this paper presents the first analysis of spatial patterns and directional spatial associations between six medical resources across Wuhan city, and evaluates the impact of study area spatial form (considered as a new dimension of spatial scale) on spatial analysis. The unique morphology of Wuhan city, which is bisected by the Yangtze River, is used to assess the impacts on LCLQ analysis and the seeking behaviour of medical resources.ResultsThis paper demonstrated the impacts of the spatial form of a study area on the global and local values of LCLQ of local-level medical resources. When splitting the city into multiple data sets (e.g. regions A and B in this paper), the global and local LCLQ values for pharmacies, clinics and community hospitals changed signficantly in both regions after the spatial partition. The border areas between regions A and B were influenced most.ConclusionThis paper focused on the impacts of the unique spatial form of the study area created by large-scale natural barriers. we should not ignore the impacts of the unique spatial form of the study area created by large-scale natural barriers such as mountains, rivers or lakes. The findings highlight another form of multiscale analysis in urban GIS.