Hospital Flow Simulation and Space Layout Planning Based on Low-Trust Social Force Model

Abstract

The spatial layout of hospitals shows constant intersection of streamlines with the patients in different kinds of needs finding their path to various service facilities. Along with COVID pandemic, low-trust psychology raises among social relationships, which has brought significant changes during space planning process. This paper aimed at the lack of specific technical methods for flow simulation and spatial layout for hospital buildings. To simulate hospital crowd behaviors, this paper first proposes a novel low-trust social force model. Then, based on medical process analysis, hospital space survey, and infection theory, the simulation model was established. After that, the original and planned layouts were simulated, and key performance metrics were calculated. Results are visualized and the impact of different forms of hospital space layout and service facility layout are analyzed. Finally, optimization suggestions are proposed, which can provide a basis for hospital space and facility layout evaluation while reducing the cost of frequent hospital renovations. Based on computer simulation with new LtSFM, this method has the advantage of accurate patient crowd prediction and lead to effective space layout planning. Applications in a real-world hospital showed that the proposed method can predict the bottleneck of the layout capacity of hospital space facilities and propose corresponding improvement measures, thereby reducing the hidden risk of passenger flow gathering, improving the service level of facilities, and reducing overall infection risks.