jailcd2020032: Research on the Elderly Care Service System and Characteristics of Spatial Distribution of CareFacilities for the Elderly in Japan—A Case Study of Kitakyushu, Japan

Abstract

Japan is the country with the highest proportion of elderly adults in the world. At the same time, with the development of such a deep aging society, Japan also establishes a unique and relatively complete caring system. Therefore, this paper firstly analyzed the existing caring service system in Japan. Then, based on the census data and related facilities information including care facilities and medical facilities, this study uses Geographic Information System and big data visualization platform to draw the scale distribution map and heat map of the elderly care facilities and so on. Furthermore, combined with the distribution characteristics of the elderly in each wards and chomes, we analyzed the current distribution characteristics of care resources. The study finds that Japan's elderly care system has a variety of services with multi-layered and multi-level characteristics. As for care facilities, the small-scale types are more common in Kitakyushu, and the spatial distribution is decentralized and highly consistent with urban spatial structure. Meanwhile, the number of facilities also tends to decrease along the main development axis on both sides. However, the distribution of the aging population has opposite characteristics to the distribution of facilities, especially the lack of facilities in the surrounding suburbs.