Abstract:

The need for field hospitals increased drastically during COVID-19 pandemic. Location of a field hospital is probably the most critical decision taken by government authorities since it directly affect the patients' access to the hospital. This study aims to determine the most suitable location for a COVID-19 field hospital to be constructed in İzmir, the third largest city of Turkey. Fuzzy Choquet integral multi criteria decision making technique that allows for linguistic assessments is used to evaluate the alternative locations for the field hospital. This method also obtains a general weight by taking into account the interaction between the criteria. Besides, decision-makers can use interval values while evaluating each criterion and thus this process eliminates errors in subjective decision-making. Moreover it is also possible to obtain the result for which alternative is the best preferred for each of criterion. Overall weight values of four alternative locations in İzmir (i.e., Bornova, Karsiyaka, Konak and Buca) were determined and Bornova alternative with the highest overall weight value was proposed as the most suitable location for the field hospital.

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