Smart Rural Village’s Healthcare and Energy Indicators—Twin Enablers to Smart Rural Life

Abstract

Poverty in rural areas remains rife and high despite the rapid societal developments and technological advancements the world is riding on, brought about by the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Most communities and individuals in many rural areas of the world often face near zero to limited access to basic services such as access to energy and healthcare. The study’s objective is to develop linkages between smart rural health indicators and smart rural energy indicators. This is achieved by using a six-stage method developed over a two year period. The method uses sustainable development goals as a point of departure; however, in this study, the focus is on healthcare and energy access. The following indicators has been derived: the number of patients in a village monitored remotely, the number of persons having access to a mobile health clinic powered by a renewable energy source, the number of network routers powered by renewable energy to enable drone usage in a village, and the accessibility of a patient’s database by the village surgeon remotely due to reliable and accessible servers powered by a mixture of sustainable and renewable energy. The paper concludes that a sustainable, renewable energy mix acts as the enabling link that renders healthcare services in rural villages accessible to all.

The Spatial Distribution Pattern and Influencing Factors of Rural Governance Demonstration Villages and Towns in China

“…As for the research on the villages and towns, domestic and foreign scholars have focused on their spatial distribution and influencing factors (Tchetchik et al, 2008; Chen et al, 2019; Yan et al, 2019), the development mode and path (Buark et al, 2004; Huang et al, 2019; Chen et al, 2022), the evolution process and mechanism (Liu and Wu, 2011; Greta et al, 2019; Li, 2019), rural development and protection (Yang, 2017; Brown, 2021; Yan, 2021), as well as rural transformation and revitalization (Chiodo, 2019; Wang and Li, 2022; Zhang and Zhang, 2022). In terms of the research object, the foreign academic focus has been on rural tourism (Maja et al, 2022), smart villages (Król and Hernik, 2022), digital villages (Gao et al, 2022), and related topics. However, China has a long history and a prosperous culture; so compared with foreign countries, the research object in China is wider and covers ethnic minority characteristic villages, traditional villages, ancient villages, ancient towns, historical and cultural towns, leisure villages and key rural tourism villages (Chen, 2019; Wang and Liu, 2020; Xu et al, 2020).…”