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Access to 'universal banking services' through the post office network has been a goal of the UK governments over the last twenty years. Various policies and mechanisms have been put in place in an attempt to maintain national geographical coverage with access points while increasing the financial viability of the network. One such mechanism is represented by the six official criteria for access to post offices, expressed as a percentage of the UK population living within one mile, three miles, and six miles of a post office. The method for calculating compliance with these access criteria is not published. Nor will any granular results be published, but only an annual statement that the criteria are being met. This article examines geographical and temporal access to post offices in order to understand the territorial coverage of the network and the impact this has on the provision of basic banking services. The area under investigation is Wales, for which we are reviewing the Government's official access criteria. Through the Post Office Ltd website, we are collecting up-to-date information on the locations and opening hours of post offices in Wales. In addition, a detailed population grid is combined with calculated areas of equidistant geographical access, called isochrones, to determine the number of people who have access to the post office network. The isochrones are based on the Welsh road network and are calculated for different travel modes and thresholds using a powerful routing engine. Our results show that the official access criteria are largely unmet in Wales. In addition, and in contrast to previous studies, we show a rural-urban divide not in terms of spatial access, but in the combination of spatial and temporal access. The results are of both practical and theoretical value and will hopefully inform policy makers.

Urban areas are amongst the most adversely affected regions by current and future climate change effects. One issue when it comes to measuring, for example, impacts, vulnerabilities, and resilience in preparation of adaptation action is the abundance of conceptual frameworks and associated definitions. Frequently, those definitions contradict each other and shift over time. Prominently, in the transition from the IPCC AR (International Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report) 4 to the IPCC AR 5, a number of conceptual understandings have changed. By integrating common concepts, the literature review presented intends to thoroughly investigate frameworks applied to assess climate change effects on urban areas, creating an evidence base for research and politically relevant adaptation. Thereby, questions concerning the temporal development of publication activity, the geographical scopes of studies and authors, and the dominant concepts as applied in the studies are addressed. A total of 50 publications is identified following screening titles, abstracts, and full texts successively based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Major findings derived from our literature corpus include a recently rising trend in the number of publications, a focus on Chinese cities, an imbalance in favor of authors from Europe and North America, a dominance of the concept of vulnerability, and a strong influence of the IPCC publications. However, confusion regarding various understandings remains. Future research should focus on mainstreaming and unifying conceptual frameworks and definitions as well as on conducting comparative studies.

Geographic information science (GIScience) offers survey researchers a plethora of rapidly evolving research strategies and tools for data acquisition and analysis. However, the potential for incorporating geographic information systems (GIS) tools into traditional survey research has not yet been fully appreciated by survey researchers. In this article, we provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances and challenges in leveraging this potential. First, we present state-of-the-art applications of GIS tools in traditional survey research, drawing mainly on examples from psychological survey research (e.g., socioecological psychology). We also discuss innovative GIS tools (e.g., wearables) and GIScience methods (e.g., citizen sensing) that expand the scope of traditional surveys. Second, we highlight a number of challenges and problems (e.g., choice of spatial scale, statistical issues, privacy concerns) and - where possible - suggest remedies. With increasing awareness of the potential that GIS tools hold for survey research, and intensified dialogue between researchers from both sides, more fruitful collaboration appears within reach.