Evidence-Based Targeting of Infrastructure Investments : A Model for Accessibility to Services in Pakistan's Rural Communities

Overview & Synopsis

This paper presents a model for promoting rural connectivity in Pakistan’s rural communities. The model uses geospatial data, road networks, and socioeconomic activities to determine accessibility to services. It considers factors specific to rural areas, incorporating seasonal variations and evaluating multimodal journeys. The presented model can be used to establish baseline accessibility conditions, simulate potential improvements, and assess the impact of shocks (such as from floods and other disasters) on accessibility to services. The data used for the model include elevation, land cover, population, and road data. The model consists of several steps, including determining walking speeds and on-road speeds, merging walking and on-road speeds for multimodal speeds, calculating service access times, and weighting by population. The outputs of the model are average access times to services—including entities such as schools, health facilities, district headquarters, and agricultural markets - and rankings of administrative units based on accessibility, and maps illustrating accessibility levels. The paper discusses three use cases of the model in Pakistan: (1) baseline accessibility to services estimation in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh provinces at district and tehsil levels; (2) a comprehensive assessment for Sindh Province comparing accessibility during the floods (shock) to a typical monsoon season post the 2022 floods in Pakistan; and (3) analysis to measure in the service-accessibility benefits of a number of proposed road upgrades in Shangla District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.