TITLE:
Spatial Accessibility of Emergency Facilities to Road Accident Victims in Federal Capital City
AUTHORS:
David Sesugh Aule, Mamman Saba Jibril, Badiatu Danladi Garba
KEYWORDS:
Accident, Accessibility, Emergency Facility, Rescue, Geographic Information System (GIS)
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.11 No.2,
February
28,
2023
ABSTRACT: This paper studied the spatial accessibility of emergency facilities to
road accident victims in Federal Capital City to determine the sufficiency of
existing emergency health care facilities and rescue facilities in servicing
accident victims. This is useful for developing means of saving the lives of
accident victims in the Federal Fapital City (FCC). The data used comprised of
Nigerian Sat II 2013 multispectral imagery (5 m multispectral and 2.5 m Panchromatic)
of FCC obtained from the National Space Research and Development Agency
(NARSDA), coordinates of seventy (70) accident black spots, five (5) zebra
points and sixteen (16) emergency health care facilities obtained from Federal
Road Safety Commission (FRSC). ArcGIS 10.0 software was used to display, visualize, identify and extract features from the
imagery, and create maps from
different layers of the spatial data, choose colors and symbols, create buffer zones, analyze spatial relationships, and design map layouts. Purposeful
sampling method was adopted to administer 99 questionnaires to accident victims
in the hospitals within the FCC. The spatial data were used to determine the time of rescue, type of
rescue and coverage time of rescue operation. The statistical data were used to assess the spatio-temporal distribution of
accidents and determine the level of response by the rescue teams. The results
show that accident victims have adequate access to health facilities but
inadequate access to zebra points, and passers-by have more effective accident
response than the government action agencies. Specific points for the creation
of additional zebra points were identified through buffering, and the creation
of sustainable Good Samaritan programs and training for community persons in
first aid were suggested. Meanwhile, further research to determine the impact
of time of rescue, type of rescue and category of hospital on the accident
victims was suggested.