Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm

Existing methods of prioritizing rural roads for construction in hilly and mountainous settings require expensive data collection or major simplifications of ground conditions. Traditional social surplus based-methods favor economic and political decision criteria over social criteria, despite...

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Main Authors:	Heyns, Andries, Banick, Robert, Regmi, Suraj
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:	RURAL ROADS POVERTY MONSOON SEASON INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING CONNECTIVITY POLITICAL ECONOMY
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/486171611677840463/Roads-Development-Optimization-for-All-Season-Service-Accessibility-Improvement-in-Rural-Nepal-Using-a-Novel-Cost-Time-Model-and-Evolutionary-Algorithm http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35073

id	okr-10986-35073
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-350732022-09-20T00:10:24Z Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm Heyns, Andries Banick, Robert Regmi, Suraj RURAL ROADS POVERTY MONSOON SEASON INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING CONNECTIVITY POLITICAL ECONOMY Existing methods of prioritizing rural roads for construction in hilly and mountainous settings require expensive data collection or major simplifications of ground conditions. Traditional social surplus based-methods favor economic and political decision criteria over social criteria, despite evidence of the latter’s importance, and struggle to scale beyond major roads to feeder roads, forcing local governments with limited capacity to adopt ad-hoc alternative criteria. Using roads proposed for construction in Nepal’s remote Karnali province, this paper develops a scalable method to prioritize these roads for inclusion in construction plans with the aim of optimizing potential accessibility improvements to specified services in dry and monsoon seasons—within Karnali’s infrastructure budget constraints. Road-specific improvements in accessibility to services are measured by estimating accessibility changes resulting from each proposed road within a multimodal accessibility model. In this paper, walking across Karnali’s mountainous, high-elevation terrain is incorporated as a primary modality—a rarity in related accessibility literature. These improvements are implemented within heuristic and integer-linear programming optimization models. Optimization-determined solutions were calculated within a day, and substantially outperformed the actual roads selected by Karnali’s provincial government in terms of accessibility, efficiency, and political economy 2021-01-28T15:53:25Z 2021-01-28T15:53:25Z 2021-01 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/486171611677840463/Roads-Development-Optimization-for-All-Season-Service-Accessibility-Improvement-in-Rural-Nepal-Using-a-Novel-Cost-Time-Model-and-Evolutionary-Algorithm http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35073 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9526 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper South Asia Nepal
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	RURAL ROADS POVERTY MONSOON SEASON INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING CONNECTIVITY POLITICAL ECONOMY
spellingShingle	RURAL ROADS POVERTY MONSOON SEASON INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING CONNECTIVITY POLITICAL ECONOMY Heyns, Andries Banick, Robert Regmi, Suraj Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
geographic_facet	South Asia Nepal
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9526
description	Existing methods of prioritizing rural roads for construction in hilly and mountainous settings require expensive data collection or major simplifications of ground conditions. Traditional social surplus based-methods favor economic and political decision criteria over social criteria, despite evidence of the latter’s importance, and struggle to scale beyond major roads to feeder roads, forcing local governments with limited capacity to adopt ad-hoc alternative criteria. Using roads proposed for construction in Nepal’s remote Karnali province, this paper develops a scalable method to prioritize these roads for inclusion in construction plans with the aim of optimizing potential accessibility improvements to specified services in dry and monsoon seasons—within Karnali’s infrastructure budget constraints. Road-specific improvements in accessibility to services are measured by estimating accessibility changes resulting from each proposed road within a multimodal accessibility model. In this paper, walking across Karnali’s mountainous, high-elevation terrain is incorporated as a primary modality—a rarity in related accessibility literature. These improvements are implemented within heuristic and integer-linear programming optimization models. Optimization-determined solutions were calculated within a day, and substantially outperformed the actual roads selected by Karnali’s provincial government in terms of accessibility, efficiency, and political economy
format	Working Paper
author	Heyns, Andries Banick, Robert Regmi, Suraj
author_facet	Heyns, Andries Banick, Robert Regmi, Suraj
author_sort	Heyns, Andries
title	Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
title_short	Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
title_full	Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
title_fullStr	Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
title_full_unstemmed	Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
title_sort	roads development optimization for all-season service accessibility improvement in rural nepal using a novel cost-time model and evolutionary algorithm
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2021
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/486171611677840463/Roads-Development-Optimization-for-All-Season-Service-Accessibility-Improvement-in-Rural-Nepal-Using-a-Novel-Cost-Time-Model-and-Evolutionary-Algorithm http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35073
_version_	1764482263751327744

Roads Development Optimization for All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm

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