The first outputs have been published as part of the transnational project GRANULAR, which aims to generate new datasets, tools and methods for a better understanding of rural areas and of which the Department of Information Technology of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague is a member.

The project, which focuses on various aspects of rural development, has produced so-called service accessibility indicators, applicable across the European Union. This data archive makes accessibility indicators available at EU scale, from the EU population grid of 1 km to EU-scale cities (512 million car travel times calculated between origin and destination). The newly added layer of EU cities and towns is based on a common methodology for the whole of Europe and has also been named by the European Commission. The platform uses only open source and free routing tools (OSRM), based on the OpenStreetMap (OSM) network. This routing tool allows the creation of travel time indicators for a large set of departure and destination locations. Within the GRANULAR project activities, this layer of cities and towns is considered as a proxy indicator for the discussion of small and medium-sized commercial centres in Europe.

All information, including methodology, is available on the GRANULAR project website. https://platform.ruralgranular.eu/indicator-details/27.