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STEP THREE: CONDUCT AN ACCESSIBILITY STUDY

Introduction

An accessibility study assesses the provisioning and geographic location of service points in relation to
where people live with a defined geographic area, such as a district or province, using various factors and
sets of information. Among other things, these can include the location and capacity of existing service
points, availability of roads and other travel networks, predefined access distance standards for service
points, and current and/ or future population estimates for the selected area. The analysis examines the
supply and demand of service delivery facilities by making use of a movement network. Hence actual
travel distances and not straight-line distances are used.

Accessibility statistics and maps can be created with the
aid of a Geographic Information System

Geographic access distance standards and population thresholds for different types and sizes of service
points are applied in the modelling exercise and maps and accessibility statistics are produced. These
include:

 Maps indicating service catchment areas for all existing service points and the number of people that
reside in these catchment areas.

 The total number of people that have/ lack adequate access and the distances that they travel to
reach their closest service points.

 Those service points that are currently well located and sufficient in relation to where people live and
the distances they travel to reach them.

 Existing service points that might possibly lack adequate capacity to meet the high service delivery
demand within their service catchment areas.

 Those service points which are potentially over-utilised and/ or underutilised in relation to the
population demand and the capacity thresholds of the facilities.

It is also possible to conduct accessibility modelling to determine the optimum number and geographic
location of additional service points that will be required to meet the future population demand. These
locations could improve the current population coverage in the geographic study area by a certain
number or percentage. This type of modelling takes into account various factors and sets of information,
such as:

 The location of existing service points.

 Availability of roads and other travel networks.
 Access distance standards for people to travel to service points.

 The maximum and minimum population thresholds and capacity parameters of different types and
sizes of service points.

 Current and/ or future population estimates, including future growth or decline,
depending on the availability of such data at an appropriate scale.

 Different types and orders of settlements, for instance, densely populated urban and
rural settlements and sparsely populated rural areas.
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