Open AccessEvaluation of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor Road Network: Shortest Route, Regional Distribution, and Robustness
Author(s) -
Raja Awais Liaqait,
Mujtaba Hassan Agha,
Till Becker
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
nust business review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2707-6601
pISSN - 2707-6598
DOI - 10.37435/nbr-19-0107
Subject(s) - robustness (evolution) , china , shortest path problem , transport engineering , toolbox , enabling , geography , computer science , regional science , business , graph , engineering , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , archaeology , theoretical computer science , psychotherapist , gene , programming language
Purpose - The transport road network plays a significant role in the economicdevelopment of any country. An appropriate road network not only reducestransportation cost but it also serves as an infrastructural enabler for further economicdevelopment. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is part of the Chinese“Belt and Road Initiative”, seeking better connectivity between Asia, Europe, andAfrica. The major part of the CPEC project is the development of a road networklinking the port city of Gwadar (Pakistan) with Kashgar (China). This paper focuseson the quantitative evaluation of alternate routes within the CPEC road networkinside Pakistan with regard to travel times, road development in provinces, abalanced distribution of road network among provinces, and robustness against roadclosures.Methodology - The network is developed as an undirected graph with nodes as citiesand edges as interlinking roads. Based on publicly available data, the paper identifiesthe shortest path from Gwadar to Khunjerab pass (Pakistan-China Border) andmeasures the distribution of the travelled distance among Pakistan’s provinces foreach alternate route. Moreover, the robustness of road network is evaluated by aknock-out analysis.Results - The results showed that an unconsidered route by the planners promises theshortest travel time and that some proposed routes have significantly unbalancedshare amongst provinces. There is a variation in robustness between the alternateroutes, but with any route selected, the road network is able to remain functional evenafter closure of multiple connections.Practical Implications - This study provides a decision-making toolbox for analysis andpolicy-making related to economic corridors e.g. CPEC – which is at its inceptionphase, and still tied to limited availability of data.Originality - The present study is novel because no prior study has covered the roadnetwork analysis of CPEC. Also, robustness and topographical analyses with respectto CPEC have not previously been undertaken.