Transportation accessibility issues and the location of a national facility: The case of a new paediatric hospital to serve the Republic of Ireland

Reflections on the science and art1of using a GIS to locate a new national children's hospital in Ireland

“…For example, one of the recommendations of McKinsey and Company (2005) in their report on the location of the proposed paediatric hospital is that the new centre should be in Dublin. Although this decision is built into both sets of GIS-based analysis around this topic Kelly 2006, Murphy andKillen 2007), many people outside of Dublin and environs, in particular, may feel disenfranchised from this decision and effectively relegated in access to this expensive and largely publicly funded facility. It is in response to issues such as this that there has been an increased interest in recent years in developments such as public participation GIS (Barndt 1998, Obermeyer 1998 and Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) (e.g.…”

“…Although Murphy and Killen's (2007) work is commendable for highlighting issues of inequalities in health care access and health service provision, their paper raises issues in four distinct domains that will be addressed herein. These issues include the issue of poverty and poverty proofing, the narrow focus of most GIS 'solutions', the problems implicit in the technocratic approach implicit in GIS 'solutions' to health care provision, and finally the lack of vision inherent in most of such 'solutions'.…”

Challenges and Solutions for Location of Healthcare Facilities

“…This protocol was developed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to measure factors such as populations, distances and accessibility to services. Murphy and Killen [86] presented a model based on the accessibility concept to locate a single facility in Dublin, Ireland. They concluded importance of accessibility as the minimization of travel time.…”

“…Teixeira and Antunes [96] introduced an extension of the P-median model to maximize the accessibility of users to facilities. Murphy and Killen [86] presented a model to maximize accessibility where accessibility interpreted as minimization of travel time. Other measures include work by Alsalloum and Rand [93], Chu and Chu [94], and Rahman and Smith [31] (Table 6).…”

“…Griffin et al[95], Verter and Lapierre[133], Ndiaye and Alfares[107], Teixeira and Antunes[96], Murphy and Killen[86], Chu and Chu [94], Erkut et al [134], Malczewski and Ogryczak [130], Araz et al [25], Bruni and Conforti [132], Beraldi and Bruni [120], Mitropoulos et al [117], Mitropoulos et al [131], Beraldi et al [121], Alsalloum and Rand [93], Huang et al [128], Cocking et al [126], Murawski and Church [125], Shariff et al [109], Şahin et al [103], Yin and Mu [129], Ingolfsson et al [124], Smith et al [104], Benneyan et al [97], Rahman and Smith [31], Knight et al [98], Cheu et al [99], Shiah and Chen [119], Schmid [100], Mestre et al [101], Harewood[122], Jia et al[123],Erdemir et al [111],. Galvão et al[102], Côté et al[105], Mandell[78], Jacobs et al[114] …”