Citizens to services – An insight into the workings of the Access to Services domain within the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019

Every 5 years, the Welsh Government publishes the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation. WIMD is the official measure of small area deprivation across Wales. Access to Services, one of the eight domains within WIMD is essential for capturing the sometimes juxtaposition between wealth and health and how accessible Welsh communities are to their nearest service. This domain measures a broad range of functional services that provides vital lifelines to communities as well as contributing towards their everyday wellbeing (GPs, libraries, schools to name a few). Modelling along both the public and private transport network: our multi-modal approach means all 1.4 million residential addresses within Wales are routed to and from their nearest service, aggregating travel time statistics to Local Super Output Area (LSOA) geographies. This presentation outlines the process from obtaining authoritative datasets to employing technologies and data from the Data Science Campus (ONS) and Ordnance Survey (OS) (and partners). For 2019 we have strived for significant improvements in the granularity of our travel-time data. As data and analytical techniques evolve overtime, we ensure that the methodology improves in parallel, allowing us to develop robust techniques for better policy in the future.