Kang et al Reanalysis

Our reproduction study of Kang et al provided an opportunity for learning applied network analysis in the context of spatial accesibility to healthcare. The original study explored measuring spatial accessibility to COVID-19 healthcare resources in the Chicago area. I believe that a key piece of learning from this study was understanding how we model friction and travel times across a space and how difficult it is to predict how easy or difficult it is to get from point A to point B. Our most recent reanalysis differed from the original study in that it did not replace all line segments that did not have assigned speed limits with a flat value of 35 mph. Instead we calculated speed limits based on the average speed limit for that type of road eg. highway, primary, secondary, residential. This change improved our estimation of catchment areas by having more variety in the speed limits instead of setting all roads including highways and alleys to have speed values of 35 mph. There are certainly opportunities to improve the network analysis in this study. It only calculates catchment areas based on car-based transportation instead of other modes and we don’t have access to any traffic data. If we wanted this study to be an opportunity for more complex network analysis then we could include some of these factors. I would like to see this study replicated in a more general context of healthcare accesibility. It would also be interesting to see how the spatial accesibility calculations work in a much more rural area or comparing a larger extent.

Link to full report

Link to full repository