Recent advances and applications in accessibility modelling

Accessibility is a concept that has become central to physical planning and spatial modelling for more than fifty years. As measure of the relative nearness or proximity of one place and persons to all other places or persons, conceptually linked to Newton’s law of gravity, its origins can be traced back to the 1920s when it was used in location theory and regional economic planning and retail planning. Accessibility models have in the past decades been applied in several academic fields such as spatial economics, urban geography, rural geography, health geography, time geography, and transport engineering. Many different applications have been developed in these fields and can be categorized in several ways Here we distinguish four basic perspectives on accessibility: (i) infrastructure-based measures, analyzing the performance or service level of transport infrastructure, (ii) location-based measures, analyzing accessibility of spatially distributed activities, typically on an aggregate level, (iii) person-based measures, founded in the space–time geography, analyzing accessibility at the level of the individual level, and (iv) utility-based measures, analyzing the welfare benefits that people derive from levels of access to the spatially distributed activities. It seems with advances in geospatial technology, internet technology, and abundance of detailed spatial data and real-time transport data sets, the field of accessibility modelling is thriving. In this era of data abundance, reflections on the role of accessibility modeling are more than ever important in the search for sound and interdisciplinary accessibility theories and tools. This is the rationale which characterizes the articles included in this Special Issue.