10 Minute Towns |Access i b i l i t y & Framework Repor t
3.1 Data Collection To undertake the analysis, the locations of amenities and services was first collected to understand the existing distribution of community facilities in the three towns. The categories of facilities were as follows:
Healthcare: • Dentists; • General practices; • Health Centres; • Hospitals; • Nursing homes; and • Pharmacies.
Education:
Retail:
• Third level institutions; • Secondary schools; • Primary schools; and • Special needs schools.
• Supermarket; • Shopping centres; and • Corner shops.
Leisure:
Public Transport:
• Theatres; • Cinemas; • Libraries; • Museums; and • Sports and Recreation Facilities.
• Bus stops; and • Rail stations.
3.2 Data Validation The preliminary data was validated with both Local Authority contacts and report team colleagues who are residents in the three towns to verify accuracy and ensure that community facilities not included in the source datasets were added. Additional information about the towns and proposals for future developments and facilities that may be relevant to the study were also requested from the Local Authority contacts.
Geographic data for many community facilities, such as education and healthcare, is available from the official government open data portal data.gov.ie. For other facilities, such as retail and leisure, as well as for the street network, OpenStreetMap (OSM) data is a valuable resource. OSM is an open-source collaborative online mapping project, and its data can be freely used with attribution. There are many online portals for downloading data from OSM into GIS-compatible formats. It should be noted that facilities may be taken from source data as polygon features, in which case they should be converted to point features before proceeding with the analysis in a Geographical Information System (GIS) package ArcGIS.
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