Towards an integrated locational accessibility analysis of European regions

Accessibility, the ease with which one can travel from one location to another, is a key topic at the
intersection of urban and transport geography and plays an important role in our everyday lives.
This doctoral research project aims to develop an innovative framework that integrates multiple
air transport dimensions into a coherent accessibility analysis on the European scale. The project
focuses on travel time and travel cost as main indicators of accessibility. The combined effects on
accessibility of the following dimensions will be evaluated: (1) the principle of self-hubbing, i.e.
passengers combining multiple flight tickets themselves to reach their destination, (2) multimodal
transport, i.e. using a combination of transport modes, and (3) the concept of an airport
catchment area, i.e. the area from which an airport resources passengers. To this end we will
adopt innovative approaches to the data collection process, e.g. by focusing on web data and by
automating the process using programming code. To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet
been undertaken that integrates all of these dimensions above in a single, coherent accessibility
analysis of the European urban landscape.