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 Statistical Geography portal on the ABS website (ABS 2023).

Information in relation to how ARIA+ scores are calculated for physical locations is available from the Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR 2023).

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.

Geographic remoteness is essentially a measure of a location's level of access to services. Larger population centres tend to have a greater level of service provision than small centres. Typically, a population centre is not likely to provide a full range of services until its population reaches around 250,000 people.

Information relating to remoteness and other aspects of statistical geography is available from the Statistical Geography portal on the ABS website:

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2023. Statistical geography. Viewed 27 April 2023, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/statistical-geography

Information relating to the development of the ARIA and ARIA+ scores by the Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR) at the University of Adelaide is available from the ACHR website:

ACHR (Australian Centre for Housing Research) 2023. Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+)​. Viewed 27 April 2023, https​:​/​/able​.adelaide​.edu​.au​/housing​-research​/data​-gateway​/aria