An exploratory analysis of disabled people accessibility to urban public transport: the use of Geographical Information Systems

The potential information available in administrative records managed by Public Administrations is vast for its value in improving the social and economic research and its utility to evaluate, judge and plan the public policies. An advance in the standardization and coordination of the information records and systems would reduce the marginal cost of operations and would update data in order to avoid the fraud and improve the transparency. Thus, the aim of this paper is merging three independent public databases that they refer to people with disabilities, their location and their accessibility to urban transport. To do this, a new and unique database is built using a Geographic Information System (GIS). It is the ability of GIS to reconcile spatial data from different sources that allows the creation of new data sets. This framework may improve the availability of needed data, promote integration of technology and encourage collaboration among firms and the public sector what would allow Public Administrations’ decision making taking into account the economic and social characteristics of the registered disabled people.