Service Gaps on the Road Network: Population Far from Health Centres, Hospitals and Public Schools, by Block

How far are residents really from services?

406,895 people live more than 2 km by road from the nearest health centre, against only 148,861 in a straight line. Per-block road distances to health centres, hospitals and public schools.

Who it is for

Government bodies and investors in private clinics and schools: to find blocks whose residents are actually far from a service, and to site a new service where it serves most people.

Method: what we add to the raw data

• A road network was built from street and highway centrelines, split at every intersection, with dangling ends within 3 m joined.
• The main connected component was used; it holds 90.2% of network nodes.
• Each residential building and facility was linked to its nearest network node; the link distance is added to the road distance.
• Shortest road distance from each building to the nearest facility of each type was computed, alongside straight-line distance for comparison.
• Results are weighted by each building's estimated population (from the population-by-block product) and summarised as population-weighted medians per block.
• Thresholds: 2 km for health centres, 5 km for hospitals, 1.5 km for public schools.
• The map is classified with Natural Breaks (Jenks) on road distance to the nearest health centre.

Product details

Spatial layers

• B04_blocks_access — polygons, 499: Access distance and population beyond threshold per block
• B04_facilities — points, 358: Health centres, hospitals and public schools

Tables

• B04_blocks_access.csv — 499 rows: Block table (tabular copy of the layer)
• B04_service_summary.csv — 3 rows: Per-service summary: population beyond threshold by road and straight line

Limitations

• Street centrelines may omit some lanes, internal roads and driveways, so some road distances may be over-estimated. The median road / straight-line ratio to health centres is 1.54, slightly above what a complete urban network would give; road figures are a reasonable upper bound and straight-line figures a lower bound.
• Road distance, not travel time: road speeds and directions are unavailable, so all roads were treated as two-way.
• Intersections were treated as at-grade, including bridges and underpasses, so some distances near grade-separated junctions may be under-estimated.
• Buildings in components detached from the main network were linked to the nearest main-network node; 36,030 estimated residents live more than 500 m from their node.
• Population is an estimate distributed from the 2020 census, not a count, and inherits that product's limitations.
• Facilities include public and private health centres and hospitals, and public schools of all levels and both genders, with no distinction by level, gender or capacity.
• Hawar Islands are included in the data but lie outside the map frame.

FAQ

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