Abstract:With the global trend of population aging, how to integrate the health needs of elderly people into public open space (POS) development while taking into account public interest is a major challenge in the 21st century. Although the issues of elderly people's health and their POS needs are receiving increasing attention, research on continuous improvement strategies for POS for healthy aging societies is still limited. Hence, this study explored continuous improvement strategies thoroughly and systematically by using the DANP-V model. The findings revealed cognitive differences between expert and elderly groups. Moreover, water features, waste management, and co-maintenance spaces were the three criteria with the largest gap value. POS improvement has previously been implemented based on a priority order ranked from the criterion with largest gap value to the criterion with the smallest one. However, an alternative approach based on the cause-effect relationship is proposed in this paper. The study findings have both theoretical and practical implications for POS planners and designers.

Global population is aging, particularly in developed countries and cities. Through the "Friendly Elderly Cities" and "Aging in Place" initiatives, various countries are making great efforts to improve the welfare and quality of life of the elderly, with the aim of catering to the physical and spiritual health as well as social welfare of the elderly. In this regard, the improvement of the housing environment of the elderly is one of the key factors in their quality of life and health. This study aims to effectively assess and improve the housing environment of the elderly in order to enhance their quality of life; it also aims to contribute the knowledge about improving elderly housing by applying an assessment framework using expert interviews and data collected from relevant literature. Using a mixed Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis model, a combination of the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory)-based ANP (Analytic Network Process) (DANP) and the modified VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) methods, and the investigations and assessments in the case study, this study proposes strategies and directions for improving elderly housing. The study results indicate that, as distinct from using traditional methodologies where the hypothesis criteria are mutually independent, the proposed hybrid model (examining real-life problems by considering the mutual influences of factors) identifies a priority sequence wherein emphasis is placed on improving ventilation and air quality rather than adjustment of temperature. The systemic way of thinking shifts the focus from the most apparent problems to the root cause of the problems. Doing so avoids any mismatch of resource allocation in decision-making and thus maximizes the efficiency and sustainability of the improvement.

With globalization, the notion of “creative city” has become a core concept of many cities in the world development policies, with real properties being upgraded or used to change, renewal is being conducted, and creative industries are emerging. This trend has reached its peak in the past decade, with different forms and scales gathering global development momentum among the creative communities to promote the development of creative economies. In recent years, however, there was still skepticism about the sustainability of the current creative communities. Many scholars have pointed out that signs of unsustainability have begun to appear in many creative communities. To overcome these obstacles, the development of rational and highly effective improvement strategy requires a dynamic thinking process. Therefore, this study employs the DEMATEL-based ANP with modified VIKOR (D-DANP-mV) model in presenting an assessment framework for the sustainability of creative communities. This system is used to assess the sustainability of current creative communities and determine how to solve their problems. Thus, continuous and systemic improvement strategies can be developed to achieve the aim of sustainable development. Two creative communities in Taiwan, Taichung Cultural and Creative Industries Park (TCCIP), and Shen-Ji New Village (SJNV), are used as case studies in this study. Based on the concept of systematic improvement from fundamental issues, the results indicate that the improvement priorities can be determined by applying the D-DANP-mV model. This approach is different from those found by a conventional method with the hypothesis of independent criteria (e.g., diversification of creative talents in TCCIP), and cannot use for performance improvement (e.g., only can be used for ranking and selection among alternatives). Considering these points, unreasonable premises, biased errors, and lack of some real application functions in the process of resource allocation could be more efficient improvement strategies generated in this proposed model.

The green supply chain management (GSCM) is an enterprise’s effort to protect the environment and a key way to achieve sustainable environmental development. On the contrary, globalization brings more risks to the supply chain. Resilience has become a critical definition in supply chain management to help enterprises review the disruption and return to normal state. Therefore, choosing a resilient-green supplier to build a supply chain environment with flexibility and greenness under interruption becomes necessary for research works. However, the existing studies tended to focus on only one of the factors with resilience and greenness, and no comprehensive criteria system and performance value is expressed by a crisp number. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid method which integrates the Best-Worst method (BWM), Weighted Aggregated Sum-Product Assessment (WASPAS), and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to solve the critical problems. Firstly, BWM is used to weigh the criteria; secondly, intuitionistic fuzzy numbers are introduced into the ranking stage. Then, the integrated WASPAS and TOPSIS are used to rank the alternatives to select the optimal resilient-green supplier. Finally, an illustrative example proves the feasibility of this method.

The prevention and control of nosocomial infection (NI) are becoming increasingly difficult, and its mechanism is becoming increasingly complex. A globally aging population means that an increasing proportion of patients have a susceptible constitution, and the frequent occurrence of severe infectious diseases has also led to an increase in the cost of prevention and control of NI. Medical buildings’ spatial environment design for the prevention of NI has been a hot subject of considerable research, but few previous studies have summarized the design criteria for a medical building environment to control the risk of NI. Thus, there is no suitable evaluation framework to determine whether the spatial environment of a medical building is capable of inhibiting the spread of NI. In the context of the global spread of COVID-19, it is necessary to evaluate the performance of the existing medical building environment in terms of inhibiting the spread of NI and to verify current environmental improvement strategies for the efficient and rational use of resources. This study determines the key design elements for the spatial environment of medical buildings, constructs an evaluation framework using exploratory factor analysis, verifies the complex dominant influence relationship, and prioritizes criteria in the evaluation framework using the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory- (DEMATEL-) based analytical network process (ANP) (DANP). Using representative real cases, this study uses the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to evaluate and analyze the performance with the aspiration level of reducing the NI risk. A continuous and systematic transformation design strategy for these real cases is proposed. The main contributions of this study include the following: (1) it creates a systematic framework that allows hospital decision-makers to evaluate the spatial environment of medical buildings; (2) it provides a reference for making design decisions to improve the current situation using the results of a performance evaluation; (3) it draws an influential network relation map (INRM) and the training of influence weights (IWs) for criteria. The sources of practical problems can be identified by the proposed evaluation framework, and the corresponding strategy can be proposed to avoid the waste of resources for the prevention of epidemics.