Introduction

Hospitals are one of the fundamental infrastructures to a city. They carry the responsibilities of curing diseases and handling accidents. In contemporary city life, car accidents are one of the greatest cause of casualties. On average, there are 290 people die in new york city because of vehicle accidents, and there are more injuries. Thus I wonder how is New York covered with hospital resources. Even though a hospital may not save everything, but the chance of survival can be greatly increased if the accident happens close to the hospital and the wounded can receive professional assistance soon enough.

In this study, combining data of hospital locations and vehicle accidents, I intend to study whether the hospital coverage is sufficient in NY city when dealing with severe traffic accidents.

Reference

Through viewing the course work of previous students, I found this breathing map which well presents the population distribution in NYC. This map is really beautiful and presents the issue tangibly. If I were to do it, I would create more intervals so that the map looks more smooth. 

Tools:

Carto: an free online GIS tool

Data: NYPD Vehicle Collision Hospital Locations

Process

I choose the dark base map for a sense of seriousness.

I located each hospital on the graph with a buffer of 1 mile. This buffer gives the area where is within 5 mins drive of the hospital.

Then I filtered the vehicle collision, saving only the collision that involves an injury or death.

I present this data on the graph using two colors, white and red, depending on whether they intersect with a 1-mile buffer of the hospital or not.

Since Carto does not have a “difference” function, I create two layers of dots on over another in order to realize the intention of keeping two colors on the map.

Result

Reflection

According to the graph, half of New York City is well covered with hospitals, within 5 mins drive. This is a very good result considering the size and population of New York City. If the time window is increased to 10 mins, then the entire city will be well covered. 

The next step of this study can be developed into a qualitative study, suggesting whether a hospital should keep more ambulence or not depending on the number of casualties near that area.