A GIS approach to monitor accessibility of public urban space for the elderly

Abstract

This case study describes a GIS approach to determine if the spatial characteristics of a city meet the standards that need to be met to make the city as accessible as possible for elderly people with physical limitations. This model can help city planners and policy makers to determine on which parameters and where in the city adjustments need to be made for optimal accessibility for the elderly. For the whole of Rotterdam the access to services was calculated as a gravitation score, where a low gravitation represents low accessibility and a high gravitation represents high accessibility.