Site and workspaces layout process employing MDS and a PDI formula in which density is calculated using a unit lattice superposed over circumscribing-convex-hulls

摘要

A process is provided for producing layouts of building units on a quadrieral facility site, and layouts of personnel workstations and items of equipment (collectively "workplace elements") in quadrilateral subarea in the building units. There are inter-building-unit, and inter- workplace-element, operational criteria associated with the activity being performed in the facility. The well known multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) methodology is employed in optimizing building unit and workplace element configurations to suit the operational criteria. Measurement of population density index (PDI) is employed to judge whether candidate configurations of building units and workplace elements result in adverse crowdedness conditions. The PDI employed for this purpose as two novel aspects. One novelty of the PDI is its use of a "convex hull" (in the mathematical sense of the term) circumscribed about the perimetrical objects in a candidate configuration. The other novelty is that the term of the PDI equation related to density requires neither coordinate measurements nor inter-point distance measurements.