Measuring rural access for SDG 9.1.1

Abstract

The Rural Access Index (RAI) is a measure of access, developed by the World Bank in 2006. It was adopted as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 9.1.1 in 2015, to measure the accessibility of rural populations. It is currently the only indicator for the SDGs that directly measures rural access.The indicator relies on three major items of geospatial data: population, road network location and the "all-season" status of those roads. The RAI measures the proportion of the rural population that lives within 2 km of an all-season road, as defined below from the original World Bank study that initiated the RAI:

Using open data and open-source software to develop spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for achieving healthy and sustainable cities

“…Creating high-quality, fine-grained spatial indicators to measure progress towards healthy and sustainable cities worldwide presents technical challenges for both between-city and within-city comparisons. 7 , 8 , 9 Although some cities collect and maintain high-quality, 10 fine-grained data on land use, transport infrastructure, and socioeconomic characteristics, many do not. Even when such data exist, they might not be publicly available to researchers and practitioners.…”

Application of Machine Learning Algorithms on Satellite Imagery for Road Quality Monitoring: An Alternative Approach to Road Quality Surveys

“…First, the concept used can be operationalized in different ways. Some countries assess the all-season status based on visual assessment of road conditions, others on the average speed of vehicles, while others on roughness, making intercountry comparisons challenging (Workman and McPherson 2021). Second, collecting the data itself is also challenging.…”

Transport for Sustainable Development: TRL’s contributions towards meeting sustainable development goals

“…Sustainability depends on the data collection being kept simple and undemanding on local resources. TRL delivered cutting-edge research (Workman and McPherson, 2021) to refine the GIS methodology for assessing the RAI, to make it more sustainable, repeatable and consistent by using geospatial data and tools, based on trials in four countries -Ghana, Malawi, Myanmar and Nepal -which were selected for their diversity of environment and data. The GIS procedures are relatively straightforward and should be implementable by a competent GIS technician; specialist expertise and extensive experience in GIS should not be necessary.…”