Remoteness measures are calculated using Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+) scores, which are based on the road distance from a populated locality to the nearest Urban Centre. The lower the ARIA+ score for a populated locality the greater the access to services.

CODE 1     Major cities of Australia

'Major cities of Australia' includes Statistical Area Level 1s (SA1s) with an average Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+) index value of 0 to 0.2.

CODE 2     Inner regional Australia

'Inner regional Australia' includes SA1s with an average ARIA+ index value greater than 0.2 and less than or equal to 2.4.

CODE 3     Outer regional Australia

'Outer regional Australia' includes SA1s with an average ARIA+ index value greater than 2.4 and less than or equal to 5.92.

CODE 4     Remote Australia

'Remote Australia' includes SA1s with an average ARIA+ index value greater than 5.92 and less than or equal to 10.53.

CODE 5     Very remote Australia

'Very remote Australia' includes SA1s with an average ARIA+ index value greater than 10.53.

CODE 6     Migratory

'Migratory' is composed of off-shore, shipping and migratory SA1s.

Migratory includes people in transit on long distance trains, buses, aircraft and long haul road transport vehicles on Census night.

Offshore includes people on oil rigs and drilling platforms etc. It is also used for expeditioners in the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Shipping includes people who are on board vessels in Australian waters, in or between Australian ports on Census night.

The list of permissible values for this value domain, i.e. codes 1 to 6, is intended to be directly mappable to the values used by the ABS to describe remoteness areas, i.e. codes 0 to 5, where Code 0 is Major Cities of Australia and Code 5 is Remote Australia.

Information in relation to how remoteness is defined and calculated is available from the Geography portal on the ABS website.

The ARIA+ is provided by the Hugo Centre for Migration and Population Research at the University of Adelaide website.

The measures of remoteness used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) are based on population counts obtained from the Census of Population and Housing, conducted every 5 years.

ARIA+ values range from 0 (high accessibility) to 15 (high remoteness), and is based on road distance measurements from over 12,000 populated localities to the nearest Service Centres in five size categories based on population size.

Prior to 2011, ARIA+ scores were calculated for individual Census Collection Districts (CCDs). Following the phasing out of the Australian Standard Geographical Classification and the introduction of the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) by the ABS in 2011, ARIA+ scores are now calculated for individual SA1s.

Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013. - Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 5 - Remoteness Structure, July 2011. ABS cat. no. 1270.055.005. Canberra: ABS. Viewed 15 July 2013,
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/DetailsPage/1270.0.55.005July%202011?OpenDocument

Hugo Centre for Migration and Population Research 2018. ARIA. Viewed 1 May 2018,
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/hugo-centre/spatial_data/aria/

Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018. Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 5 - Remoteness Structure, July 2016. ABS cat. no. 1270.055.005. Canberra: ABS. Viewed 30 April 2018, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/1270.0.55.005