Agent-Based Simulation to Inform Planning Strategies for Welfare Facilities for the Elderly: Day Care Center Development in a Japanese City

In recent decades, the demands of welfare facilities for elderly people is raising rapidly in Japan. Local governments in Japan manage to supply elderly people with numerous health care services according to a new national-wide residential planning for aged population. In this research we will introduce an agent-based simulation model that can be used to help local government for getting insight on planning strategy regarding daycare center (DC center) development for elderly people through simulation, in which the simulation model of human lifecycle stage is integrated with the simulation model of DC center development and operation. Through simulating the behaviors of local government policy-maker, elderly people, daycare center owner, it is able to forecast the demand for DCs in the simulation environment. The simulation framework of the DC development and operation was designed on the rules and laws of Japan for daycare services, which follow the procedure of elderly people applying for daycare center services, government certificating them to choose and visit daycare centers and also, daycare center owners developing DC centers and operating on them. In present research, the model has been tested by using the real GIS dataset of a Japanese local city from the year 2000 to 2010 and then, further used to forecast the demand for daycare centers of local elderly people till the year 2030. The visualized simulation results show the possibility of using this model for supporting local government to review the planning strategy on DCs.