Geo-Spatial Analysis of Health Care Service Centres for Smart Cities: A Study of South-East District, Delhi-India

Abstract

The provision of Health Care Service Centres (HCSCs) is one of the biggest challenges in developing countries like India. Proper and equitable distribution and provision of health care services is a major challenge in a country like India especially when we talk about concept like ‘Smart cities’. The primary objective of this study was to analyze the distribution of health care facilities in making smart cities: a case study of SE Delhi. We need to pay special attention to spatial arrangement of the health care services to make city a smart city in a country like India. The design of the study is such that satellite data together with population data has been modelled to see the spatial distribution of health care services in GIS domain. The availability of satellite data e.g. IKONOS, Quick-bird, Geo-Eye, World-View I and II and even Google Earth in combination with Geographical Information System (GIS) has made added advantage in this context. Health care data were taken from Google Maps and Google Earth, population data from Census of India-2011 and other sources. GIS is used to assess, examine and map the distribution of health care services. Therefore, in this paper, in the light of the above discussion we have tried to assess the spatial distribution of health care services, to relate it with population distribution and if HCSCs are sufficient and equitably distributed or not using spatial data in GIS domain in South-East District of national capital of India, Delhi. As a part of this study, we geocoded 197 health care centres in the 36 ward of SE Delhi. Study shows that healthcare service centres are maximum in the wards where total population, density of population, household density, no. of households, no. of beds are less and moderate, while maximum wards have low spaces to build the healthcare facilities. Density of population and healthcare facilities are less in commercial and industrial area. Hospitals have more than 300 beds such as Indraprastha Apollo are located nearby very dense populated area such as Okhla, Madanpurkhadar and Sarita Vihar and Batra Hospital & Medical Research Centre are located near Sangam Vihar, Badarpur and Jaipur. In order to make Delhi a Smart city, Governments and healthcare planners need to provide healthcare facilities in the wards where it is low or not available.