Measuring global human accessibility to essential daily necessities and services.

Area of Science:

• Urban planning
• Geospatial analysis
• Sustainable development studies

Background:

• Equitable access to essential services is vital for quality of life and achieving Sustainable Development Goals.
• Current understanding of global access to necessities is limited by fragmented data and lack of infrastructure inventories.
• Measuring accessibility requires scalable methods and comprehensive data on resource distribution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a global database of essential infrastructure points of interest.
• To map global travel times to critical infrastructures as a proxy for accessibility.
• To assess disparities in infrastructure access across diverse contexts.

Main Methods:

• Compiled a global database of points of interest across six essential infrastructure categories.
• Utilized 30-meter resolution friction surface data to calculate travel times.
• Analyzed accessibility disparities considering geographic, urbanization, and socio-economic factors.

Main Results:

• Revealed significant global disparities in infrastructure availability, per capita distribution, and travel time.
• Found that 62.8% of urban residents are within a 15-minute walk of essential resources.
• Reported that 82.5% of urban residents have access within a 30-minute walk.

Conclusions:

• Infrastructure access is unevenly distributed globally.
• Optimizing planning, allocation, and management of critical infrastructure is necessary.
• Strategies should focus on promoting inclusive and sustainable development through improved access.