This repository contains the source codes for creating the user interface for "Equity of Access in Finland" application.
This website and online tool was developed to showcase the capabilities of open-source GIS-tools and the national datasets produced for the research paper Spatial accessibility and transport inequity in Finland: Open source models and perspectives from planning practice. With the app you can analyze the disparity and sufficiency of accessibility in a national context and explore the distribution of different opportunities and services that most people consider necessities in their daily lives. You have also the possibility to compare access differences between Finnish municipalities and investigate the number of opportunities accessible by public transport or bicycle within certain travel time thresholds. Additionally, you have the possibility to use this tool to analyze the equity of access differences between municipalities.
This website and online tool is part of the following article. Please cite the work as:
- Pönkänen, M., H. Tenkanen & M. Mladenović (2025). Spatial accessibility and transport inequity in Finland: Open source models and perspectives from planning practice. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 116: 102218, DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2024.102218
Abstract: During the last two decades, accessibility has begun to take a more central role in transport planning and decision making, as its importance has been recognized in many different policy agendas. Although environmental and social sustainability are central in contemporary public policy, the social exclusion effects related to access of opportunities are rarely measured at the national level. In this study, we analyze spatial accessibility to various opportunities in Finland at 1 km resolution and assess accessibility inequalities using the Palma ratio. Furthermore, we test how a web-based tool can be used in stakeholder communication and investigate the usefulness of the accessibility indicators and the tool for planning practice based on focus group discussions with Finnish transport planners. Our results show significant variation in the levels of access to different opportunities across Finnish municipalities. The Palma ratios reveal that the largest disparities are typically located in municipalities surrounding large city regions, where wealthier residents tend to have better access to opportunities compared to low-income populations. Finally, the insights from Finnish planning practitioners reveal that communicating national-level accessibility information via an online tool has high communicative and learning value for various planning and policy processes.
- Matti Pönkänen, Helsinki Region Transport / Aalto University
- Henrikki Tenkanen, Aalto University
Service hosted by GIST Lab, Aalto University.
The software components are licensed under the MIT License.