Service platform to calculate and analyse access distance to public services. Analysis of the case of the Lazio region

This thesis investigates the accessibility of essential public services in the Lazio region (Italy), with a particular focus on the most vulnerable territorial units: municipalities with fewer than 40,000 inhabitants. The motivation stems from the observation that larger urban centres generally host a full range of services and thus present fewer accessibility issues, whereas smaller municipalities often suffer from infrastructural disparities. The analysis adopts the urban cores as the fundamental spatial unit, as these represent the actual population concentrations within municipal boundaries. The study focuses on key sectors such as healthcare and education, for which accessibility is assessed by computing travel distances and times from each urban cores to the nearest service facility. These measurements are performed under two distinct scenarios: travel by private vehicle, accounting for traffic conditions, and travel by public transport. Due to data availability limitations, the public transport analysis is limited to the province of Rome. The accessibility measures are synthesized into sector-specific indices that can be analysed both at the urban cores level and in aggregated form at the municipal level. To support dissemination and usability of the data infrastructure created, an interactive web-based application was developed. The platform includes a dynamic map viewer that allows stakeholders, planners, and citizens to explore the computed accessibility indices, inspect individual urban centres, and access the underlying data infrastructure in a transparent and intuitive manner. The results reveal spatial disparities in service accessibility, particularly when comparing private vehicle use with public transport. While car accessibility remains relatively consistent across services, with only a few areas showing critical issues, public transport accessibility presents substantial gaps, especially in peripheral zones. These findings underscore the importance of evaluating accessibility across multiple transport modes depending on the type of service and, when combined with other key socio-territorial data, highlight priority areas for infrastructure planning and policy action.