Skip to contentScholarGate
LibraryBookshelfDeskReview StudioAssistant
Sign in
Two-Step Floating Catchment Area/Evidence
Method evidence record

Two-Step Floating Catchment Area

The two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method measures spatial accessibility to constrained services — most famously physicians and hospitals — by accounting not only for how close supply is but for how many other people are competing for it. Introduced by Wei Luo and Fahui Wang in 2003, it works in two passes: first computing a supply-to-demand ratio at every service location, then summing those ratios over all services within reach of each population site. The result is a single accessibility score per location that captures both proximity and crowding, and it has become the standard measure of access to healthcare and other capacity-limited services.

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Source record

Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.

Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Method (2SFCA)
Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / human-geography
  • Luo, W., & Wang, F. (2003). Measures of spatial accessibility to health care in a GIS environment: synthesis and a case study in the Chicago region. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 30(6), 865–884. · DOI 10.1068/b29120
Open full method

Curated claims

Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.

No curated claims yet

This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.

Related methods

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.

Taxonomic bucketAccessibility Analysismachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyCatchment Area Analysismachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Used in the same domainGravity Model of Migrationmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyIsochrone Analysismachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.

Evidence status

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Bibliographic sources are present. Claim-level evidence review has not been performed.

Sources

1 recorded citation, copied from the method source record.

Actions

Open method page
ScholarGate

A content-first reference library for research methods — what each one is, how it works, and where it comes from.

Open data (CC-BY)

Explore

  • Library
  • Search the library…
  • Browse by field
  • Fields
  • Journey
  • Compare
  • Which method?

Reference

  • Subjects
  • Atlas
  • Glossary
  • Methodology
  • Philosophy

Your tools

  • Bookshelf
  • Desk
  • Chat

Company

  • About
  • Pricing
  • Contact
  • Suggest a method

Entries are compiled from published sources for reference. Verifying the accuracy and suitability of any information for your own use remains your responsibility.

© 2026 ScholarGate · A research-method reference library
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Terms
  • Delete account