Methodology

According to my mother patients in care homes need only a little assistance with daily chores such as bathing, cleaning and cooking. They are often still quite active and involved in the community. Therefore care homes are most appropriately placed in areas that contain activities they enjoy.
I extracted the factors in vector data from the data I recieved in ArcGIS data. I chose factors according to their importance in the social activities of seniors. I selected these factors by their location within Prince George and exported them into their own shape files.

Medical and Emergency Facilities

A lower order priority for the analysis given the relative health of the patients, medical facilities were still a concern. Health care is an important consideration as care home patients are generally in poorer health than the average person. So care homes should be located sufficiently near hospitals and close to ambulance stations. Care home patients should also be located near a firehall as they are unable to evacuate a building very quickly and may need extra assistance. Though health care is a consideration as the patients are generally healthy enough that this is not a primary concern when placing a care home.

High Priority Social Considerations

Often patients like to be located near libraries and reccentres to keep in touch with the community and access information. Care home patients are fairly active physically and within their community therefore locating them close to these community facilites was a top priority of this model.

Medium Priority Social Considerations

Often care homes are placed near elementary schools and daycares so that the patients and students can join in activities together. The elderly patients also enjoy watching children play. For similar reasons care homes are also appropriately placed near parks so the patients can enjoy the outdoors.

Low Priority Social Considerations (Golf)

I have also included access to a golf course as a criterion as many patients enjoy outdoor activities. These patients can reach the golf courses on day trips from their facility. The activity coordinator can arrange buses or Vanpools so that the distance from the care facility is not an important factor but one that many patients might consider attractive.

Constraint

I constrained the model to analyse the area within Prince George to prevent it from doing a continuous analysis of infinite space.

Click on the image below to see cartographic model