16/01/2023
An analysis of the service area is helpful in determining how accessible a location is. You can use such analysis to determine what areas can be served from given fire stations, hospitals, public transit stations, etc. based on the travel distance or the response time. Using open-source tools and data, such analysis was challenging until recently. But now, thanks to OpenStreetMap (OSM) and free online services like Openrouteservice (ORS), we have access to a worldwide street network and can carry out complex routing operations utilizing OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. In order to conduct service area analysis in QGIS, I used the ORS Tools plugin.