ARIA and Accessibility
Summary
ARIA was developed in GISCA as a joint project with the Australian Department of Health and Ageing in 1999. ARIA is an unambiguously geographical approach to defining remoteness. The most widely used ARIA product is ARIA+.
ARIA+ is a continuous varying index with values ranging from 0 (high accessibility) to 15 (high remoteness), and is based on road distance measurements from 11,879 populated localities to the nearest service centres in five size categories based on population size.
The major advantages of ARIA over other methods of measuring remoteness are that:
- it is a purely geographic measure of remoteness, which excludes any consideration of socio-economic status, "rurality" and population size factors;
- it is flexible and can be aggregated to a range of spatial units, used as a continuum or classified;
- its methodology is conceptually clear;
- it is precise;
- it is stable over time.
As a comparable index of remoteness that covers the whole of Australia, ARIA+ provides a measure of remoteness that is suitable for a broad range of applications including assisting in service planning, demographic analysis and resource allocation.
A more comprehensive summary of ARIA+ is available on the ARIA page.
ARIA in your ogranisation
ARIA provides a remoteness, or accessibility, value for every location in Australia. They are an essential tool for any organisation interested in the role of remoteness in its operations.
GISCA currently distributes two versions of ARIA for two different time periods - ARIA+ & ARIA++. Both versions are available for 2001 and the most recent iteration, 2006. Area values are available for common Australian Bureau of Statistics geographies and raw scores for localities used in the creation of the index.
A new version of ARIA+ and ARIA++ incorporating the 2011 Census, will be available towards the end of 2012.
View ARIA+ (2001 and 2006)
To purchase an ARIA product, please place your order online by completing the ARIA Order Form. If you would like to know more about an ARIA product, please email APMRC
Customised versions of ARIA
Over time, customised versions of ARIA have been developed by GISCA. These include:
- Department for Health and Ageing:
- Commonwealth Grants Commission:
- State-based ARIA (SARIA)
