Modelling Commuting Catchments in Ireland: A Hierarchical Approach using GIS

Over recent years there has emerged an increased awareness of the importance of strategic spatial planning and of the extent to which concepts such as place and space really matter (Faludi, 2000). An enhanced understanding of the geography of living and the economy requires not only a knowledge of where people and objects are but also of how those places relate to one another to create functional spaces. This requires fundamentally sound data on movement patterns, of which the most important is probably the daily journey to work (Horner, 1999, McCabe, 2006 Pers Comm). In this paper we examine spatial modelling approaches to commuting patterns using data from the CSO 2002 Census of Population (CSO 2003a, CSO 2003b. CSO 2004a). This is a particularly apposite time to undertake this research. A number of national strategic initiatives including the next Irish National Development Plan and the current National Spatial Strategy provide a clear policy context for the study (Morgenroth and Fitzgerald, 2006). Additionally it is the specific intent of the CSO in providing this data set to stimulate geo-computational analysis and modelling. This research aims to map travel to work flows in 2002 from the 15% national anonymised individual sample (known as the POWSAR data set) and secondly to investigate the technical production of new Travel Catchments Areas (TCAs) for the state as a whole.