Layout Optimization Of Public Service Facilities In Rural Areas

Adjusting and optimising the layout of rural public service facilities, allocating rural public service resources, and creating a well-allocated, high-efficient and balanced rural public service system are the requirements to achieve social justice and harmony. They are also important insurances of facilitating the balanced social and economic development in rural areas as well as the key to building new socialist suburbs.Primary and middle schools that provide compulsory education are the essential public service facilities in rural areas. Whether they are allocated reasonably and equally is directly related to the quality of rural education.The optimisation of rural primary and middle schools is a pivotal strategy for China to allocate rural educational resources in recent years,and to promote a balanced development in education. However, a number of problems are experienced when implementing these strategies due to lack of appropriate methodologies and scientific analysis.The GIS method has been widely used in various fields. Its spatial analysis, in particular, provides reliable data processing and analysing approaches to the urban/rural planning and facility layout, and can be used to achieve the combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative study in the research.This paper takes the optimisation of educational facility layout in Dancheng County as an example. Based on the perspective of geographic space, GIS network analysis is utilised in different accessibility models, including the distance model, the gravity model and the Huff model, to figure out the number of potential students and average home-school distance for each school. By comparing with the actual student number, the optimised model can be developed to suit the layout of primary and middle schools in Dancheng. A further optimised layout will be studied in order to achieve the reasonable and fair distribution of educational resources from the following aspects:(1)Spatial database is built with GIS to achieve effective data management and visualisation of distributing educational resources in the target area.(2)Different accessibility models are analysed to obtain each school's service range and potential number of students. Comparing with the quantitative analyzing of the actual layout, an optimised model can be developed.(3)Based on the results, the school layout can be optimised following the proposed optimisation plan and then tested through the Huff model with reference to the geographical differences, making the analysis more scientific and rational.The research provides a scientific basis for the layout allocation of primary and secondary schools. Meanwhile it proposes ideas and methods which may benefit the layout optimisation of other rural public service facilities.