ARIA and Accessibility
Summary
ARIA was developed by 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 over 12,000 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:
- 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;
- the methodology is conceptually clear;
- it is precise; and
- it is relatively 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 organisation
ARIA provides a remoteness, or accessibility, value for every location in Australia. ARIA is an essential tool for any organisation interested in the ease or difficulty people face accessing services/ locations in non-metropolitan Australia.
In 2011, the Australian Population and Migration Research Centre (APMRC) incorporated the National Centre for the Social Applications of GIS (GISCA), and currently distributes two versions of ARIA (ARIA+ & ARIA+) for three different time periods (2001, 2006, and 2011).
ARIA values are available for Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) geographies and non-ABS geographies (eg Local Government Areas) as well as raw ARIA scores for populated localities used in the creation of the index.
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 or if your web browser is preventing you from placing an online order, please email APMRC
Customised versions of ARIA
Over time, customised versions of ARIA have been developed. These include:
- Department for Health and Ageing:
- Commonwealth Grants Commission:
- State-based ARIA (SARIA)
