Planning for the future: Addressing the spatial accessibility of aged residential care facilities in New Zealand

Evidence in New Zealand suggests that spatial access to aged residential care facilities (ARCFs) has been declining. Poor spatial access to facilities has been shown internationally to lead to reduced frequency of visitation by family and friends, and in turn poorer mental health and wellbeing of people in care. However, the New Zealand population is ageing and older people are increasing as a proportion of the total population. Subsequently, total demand for ARCFs is set to increase dramatically and a substantial number of facilities will likely need to be built by 2026. The intent of this thesis is to explore how geographic information science (GIS) methods can be used to identify potential locations for these ARCFs in New Zealand so that travel time for friends and family is minimised. Providers were surveyed on the relative importance of a series of spatial attributes when deciding where to place new facilities. Maps for each spatial attribute were generated from their preferences and overlaid using weighted linear combination and areas exceeding a suitability threshold were identified as potential locations. To choose optimal locations, maximal covering location-allocation models were used based on projected populations and demand for 2026. The spatial accessibility of these locations was then compared to the spatial accessibility of facilities in 2011. The results suggest that GIS methods have the potential to improve the spatial access to ARCFs to friends and family of people in care.