Development and prioritisation of catchments

Defining, ranking and socio-economic profiling of service regions for social service provision in South Africa. The paper describes the GIS techniques, tools and data inputs used for defining service catchments around 1328 towns and villages using distance based catchment analysis and applying principles of Central Place Theory. The paper provides details on the process of profiling and ranking of the service catchments as well as the subsequent prioritisation and spatial targeting of towns and villages for social service investment. Spatial targeting was tested as an approach to used to optimise the location of investment in middle order government social facilities where it can reach the most people from the least number of service points. This for services with a typical service reach of 30km.