Improving the accessibility to public schools in urban areas of developing countries through a location model and an analytical framework

Abstract

The location of primary public schools in urban areas of developing countries is the focus of this study. In such areas, new schools and modification of the current schools are required, and this process should be developed using rational and broad supporting tools for decision makers, such as optimization models. We propose a realistic coverage location model and a framework to analyze the location of schools. Our approach considers the existing schools and their resizing, the best locations of the new schools that may have different capacities, population coverage, walking distances and budget provisions for building and updating schools. As a case study, we assess the current primary school network in Ciudad Benito Juarez to provide managerial insights. Through the proposed framework, we analyze the current locations of schools and decisions to be made by considering future scenarios in different time periods. The proposed model is quite flexible and easy to adapt to new considerations, allowing it to be applied to regions in developing countries under similar conditions.

A facility location problem for extracurricular workshop planning: bi‐level model and metaheuristics

“…In this section, we review the main aspects of FLPs applied to school location in recent years. The interested reader is referred to Haase et al (2019) and de Armas et al (2022) for detailed reviews on this topic.…”

“…As pointed out by de Armas et al. (2022), maximal covering location problems (MCLPs) and p‐median problems (PMPs) are commonly used to support the location of schools. Given a fixed number of schools to locate, an MCLP seeks to maximize the number of students that are within a given distance of the schools to which they are assigned.…”

“…For instance, de Armas et al. (2022) employed an MCLP‐like model to support the capacity expansion of the primary schools in the Mexican city of Benito Juarez. Their model extends the classical MCLP by including facilities of different sizes, the possibility of opening new facilities, and a limited budget for the capacity expansion of existing schools and the opening of new ones.…”