The spatial distribution pattern of hospitals in Wuhan indicates a core in the central urban areas and a sparse distribution in the suburbs, particularly at the center of suburbs. This study aims to improve the gravity and Huff models to analyze healthcare accessibility and resources. Results indicate that healthcare accessibility in central urban areas is better than in the suburbs, where it increasingly worsens for the suburbs. A shortage of healthcare resources is observed in large-scale and high-class hospitals in central urban areas, whereas the resources of some hospitals in the suburbs are redundant. This study proposes the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) analysis model for the location assessment in constructing new hospitals, which can effectively ameliorate healthcare accessibility in suburban areas. This study presents implications for the planning of urban healthcare facilities.

COVID‐19 maps convey hazard and risk information to the public, which play an important role in the risk communication for individual protection. The aim of this study is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of communicating the specific risk of COVID‐19 maps. By testing 71 subjects from Wuhan, China, this study explored how color schemes (cool, warm, and mixed colors) and data presentation forms (choropleth maps, graduated symbol maps) influence visual cognition patterns, risk perception, comprehension, and subjective satisfaction. The results indicated that the warm scheme (yellow/red) has significant strengths in visual cognition and understanding, and the choropleth map (vs. the graduated symbol map) has significant strengths in risk expression. On subjective satisfaction, the combination of the mixed scheme (blue/yellow/red) and the choropleth map scored highest mean value. These results have implications for enhancing the focused functions of COVID‐19 maps that fit different terms: in the early and medium terms of disease transmission, choropleth maps with warm or cool colors should be considered as a priority design for their better risk perception. When the epidemic conditions are on the upturn, a better reading experience combination of choropleth maps with mixed colors can be considered.

Tag weight differences in tag maps are usually reflected by different font sizes. With this strategy, low weighted tags may be ignored and tag sizes may be misjudged due to differing word length, character height and word width. To address these shortcomings, this paper improves the layout method of tag maps by presetting anchor points. We construct weight contours based on corner points and center points of tag outer envelope rectangles and adopt hypsometric tinting as background color to reflect tag weight differences. Finally, we compare and analyze the background color strategy with the font size strategy from the perspectives of tag selection, tag recognition, tag recall, confidence, readability, and preference through eye movement experiments and questionnaire surveys. The results show that both strategies exhibit advantages (when tags are devoid of semantics), with the font size strategy being favored slightly in this abstract case. We provide tag map designers with a new visualization scheme for the expression of tag weight.