Land-use allocation has long been an important area of research in regional science. Land-use patterns are fundamental to the functions of the biosphere, creating interactions that have substantial impacts on the environment. The spatial arrangement of land uses therefore has implications for activity and travel within a region. Balancing development, economic growth, social interaction, and the protection of the natural environment is at the heart of long-term sustainability. Since land-use patterns are spatially explicit in nature, planning and management necessarily must integrate geographical information system and spatial optimization in meaningful ways if efficiency goals and objectives are to be achieved. This article reviews spatial optimization approaches that have been relied upon to support land-use planning. Characteristics of sustainable land use, particularly compactness, contiguity, and compatibility, are discussed and how spatial optimization techniques have addressed these characteristics are detailed. In particular, objectives and constraints in spatial optimization approaches are examined.

Access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services is critical for such outcomes as pregnancy and birth, prenatal and neonatal mortality, maternal morbidity and mortality, and prevention of vertical transmission of infections like HIV. Health facilities are typically set up where they can efficiently serve the nearby targeted population. However, the actual utilization of health care can be complicated as people sometimes bypass the closest or nearby facilities for various reasons such as service quality. A better understanding of how people actually utilize health services can benefit future health resource allocation as well as health program planning. In this study, we use prenatal care as an example of a basic, widely available service to investigate women’s choice and bypassing of SRH facilities as well as potential influencing factors at the geographic, clinic, household, and individual levels. The data come from a population-based survey of women of reproductive age in rural Mozambique. The spatial pattern of utilization of health clinics for prenatal care is explored by geographical information system (GIS)-based spatial analysis. Logistic regression is fitted to test the hypotheses regarding the effect of distance, service quality, and household/individual-level factors on the bypassing of the nearest clinic. The results indicate that most women living near clinics tend to utilize the closest facilities for prenatal care and those who travel farther mainly do so to seek better services. Further, for women who live far from a clinic (> 5.5 km), service quality still plays an important role in the facility bypassing while the effect of distance is no longer significant. The bypassing of nearest facility is also affected by individual characteristics such as age, HIV status, and household economic conditions. The findings help to better understand health facility choice and bypassing in developing settings, in general, and in resource-limited Sub-Saharan settings, in particular. They offer valuable guidance for future health resource allocation and health service planning.

Many Chinese cities currently are facing increased urban fire risks particularly at places such as urban villages, high-rise buildings and large warehouses. Using a unique historical fire incident dataset (2002–2013), this paper is intended to explore the urban fire dynamics and its association with urban growth in Nanjing, China, with a geographical information system (GIS)-based spatial analytics and remote sensing (RS) techniques. A new method is proposed to define a range of fire hot spots characterizing different phases of fire incident evolution, which are compared with the urban growth in the same periods. The results suggest that the fire events have been largely concentrated in the city proper and meanwhile expanding towards the suburbs, which has a similar temporal trend to the growth of population and urban land at the city level particularly since 2008. Most intensifying and persistent fire hot spots are found in the central districts, which have limited urban expansion but high population densities. Most new hot spots are located in the suburban districts, which have seen both rapid population growth and urban expansion in recent years. However, the analysis at a finer spatial scale (500 m × 500 m) shows no evidences of an explicit connection between the locations of new fire hot spots and recently developed urban land. The findings can inform future urban and emergency planning with respect to the deployment of fire and rescue resources, ultimately improving urban fire safety.

Background: Access as a primary indicator of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) efficiency has been widely studied over the last few decades. Most previous studies considered one-way trips, either getting ambulances to patients or transporting patients to hospitals. This research assesses spatiotemporal access to EMS at the shequ (the smallest administrative unit) level in Wuhan, China, attempting to fill a gap in literature by considering and comparing both trips in the evaluation of EMS access. Methods: Two spatiotemporal access measures are adopted here: the proximity-based travel time obtained from online map services and the enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E-2SFCA) which is a gravity-based model. First, the travel time is calculated for the two trips involved in one EMS journey: one is from the nearest EMS station to the scene (i.e. scene time interval (STI)) and the other is from the scene to the nearest hospital (i.e. transport time interval (TTI)). Then, the predicted travel time is incorporated into the E-2SFCA model to calculate the access measure considering the availability of the service provider as well as the population in need. For both access measures, the calculation is implemented for peak hours and off-peak hours. Results: Both methods showed a marked decrease in EMS access during peak traffic hours, and differences in spatial patterns of ambulance and hospital access. About 73.9% of shequs can receive an ambulance or get to the nearest hospital within 10 min during off-peak periods, and this proportion decreases to about 45.5% for peak periods. Most shequs with good ambulance access but poor hospital access are in the south of the study area. In general, the central areas have better ambulance, hospital and overall access than peripheral areas, particularly during off-peak periods. Conclusions: In addition to the impact of peak traffic periods on EMS access, we found that good ambulance access does not necessarily guarantee good hospital access nor the overall access, and vice versa.