This paper is concerned with geographical access to hospital services by public transport. By taking advantage of newly available public transport timetable data, a software tool is developed for the analysis of bus travel times under specified journey scenarios. The example of population access...

When publishing official population statistics, many national statistical organisations define small areas termed ‘building blocks’ which are then aggregated into larger ‘output zones’ for data release. While output zones are known to have enormous influence on spatial analysis, there...

The authors consider the definition and measurement of deprivationand of rurality in the context of health-care research. Parallels are drawn between the methodological issues involved in the measurement of deprivation and of rurality. An empirical study of the South West of England reveals the...

This paper reviews the automated zone-design procedures adopted for the creation of 2001 Census output geography in the United Kingdom. A microsimulation approach is used for the creation of household records to populate actual postcode and enumeration district boundaries, and a series of output...

The 1991 UK Decennial Census missed about 1.2 million people. These missing individuals present a serious challenge to any census user interested in measuring intercensal change, particularly amongst the most marginalised groups in society who were prominent amongst the missing population....

The question of where to accommodate future urban expansion has become a politically sensitive issue in many regions. Against the backdrop of 'urban compaction' policy, this study uses population surface modelling and cellular automata (CA) to conduct an empirical urban growth simulation for...

There is growing interest in the use of gridded population models which potentially offer advantages of stability through time and ease of integration with nonpopulation data sources. This paper assesses the accuracy of models of the type introduced by Martin in 1989. Population counts for...

Automated zone-design methods are increasingly being used to create zoning systems for a range of purposes, such as the release of census statistics or the investigation of neighbourhood effects on health. Inevitably, the characteristics originally underpinning the design of a zoning system (eg,...

A new round of censuses is being held internationally in 2010 – 11 in the face of increasing challenges to the achievement of high coverage rates. Censuses are of enormous importance due to the extensive range of planning and analysis which is dependent on the accuracy of their results....