From Quantities to Qualities in Early-stage Hospital Simulation

Simulation in early stages of hospital planning might not live up to its full potential: Results come as quantitative (crisp) values, whereas early conception specifies requirements in a more qualitative (think: linguistic) fashion. Because of this gap, it is no wonder when planners cannot easily interpret what is computed. In our most recent work, we have addressed this issue through fuzzy analysis: Crisp simulation results are mapped back into linguistic terms, which can then be compared to the requirements set by the planning team. On the one hand, this enables us to communicate “in the right language”, on the other hand, we may use this comparison for automatically raising warnings, in case there is a mismatch between the two.