Définition
The permanent database of facilities (BPE) is a statistical database. It lists a wide range of equipment and services, merchant or not, accessible to the public throughout France on January, 1st each year.
It covers over 180 different types of services and facilities, divided into seven main groups : personal services, businesses, education, health and social services, transport-travel, sports-leisure-culture and tourism.
BPE is built from various administrative sources. It collects data on access points to services intended for the population, or "equipment", located at fine geographical levels : municipalities, sub-municipal territories (Iris) and coordinates (x,y) for most types of equipment.
By the detailed knowledge of the territories it allows, BPE is a decision-making aid tool. It makes it possible in particular to study the structure of the supply of services in a territory: volume of equipment, presence or absence, concentration or dispersion, identification of service centers or territories without services, calculation of distances between municipalities equipped and not equipped, calculation of equipment rates by bringing together equipment and its potential users, setting up of equipment baskets on a particular topic, etc.