Discrete event simulation procedure for validating programs of requirements; The case of hospital space planning

Abstract:

This paper introduces a Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) tool developed as a parametric CAD program for validating a program of requirements (PoR) for hospital space planning. The DES model simulates the procedures of processing of patients treated by doctors, calculating patient throughput and patient waiting times, based on the number of doctors, patient arrivals, and treatment times. In addition, the tool is capable of defining space requirements by taking hospital design standards into account. Using this tool, what-if scenarios and assumptions on the PoR about space planning can be tested and/or validated. The tool is ultimately meant for reducing patient waiting times and/or increasing patient throughput by checking the match of the layout of a hospital with respect to its procedural operations. This tool is envisaged to grow into a toolkit providing a methodological framework for bringing Operations Research into Architectural Space Planning. The tool is implemented in Python for Grasshopper (GH), a plugin of Rhinoceros CAD software using the SimPy library.