The database covers all of France, ie the metropolitan area and the five overseas departments. The geographic reference of the database is the Official Geographic Code (COG) of the municipalities on 01/01/2021. In the borough municipalities (Paris-Lyon-Marseille), the district has been chosen as the municipal level for locating facilities.

The services and equipment of the BPE are grouped into types of equipment. There are 188 in the 2021 BPE allocated in seven groups :

• personal services;
• businesses ;
• education ;
• health and social services ;
• transports and travel ;
• sports-leisure-culture ;
• tourism.

The nomenclature of types of equipment is updated each year.

Additional characteristics are provided for the types of equipment in the fields of education and sport, leisure and culture : presence of canteen, boarding school, covered, lighted sports equipment, number of practice areas, etc.

The types of equipment are located at the level of the municipalities, the sub-municipal territories that constitute the Iris, and in coordinates (x,y). Geolocation makes it possible to get rid of preexisting zoning (municipalities or IRIS). It thus allows finer spatial or territorial studies, with data independent of predefined zoning.

Thus, geographic coordinates are available for the whole of the BPE 2021.

The nomenclature of types of equipment :

The services and equipment present in the 2021 BPE are grouped according to a nomenclature created ad hoc and updated each year to integrate changes related to sources, the insertion of new equipment, etc.

• The first level of the nomenclature contains 7 groups : personal services, businesses, education, health and social services, transport-travel, sports-leisure-culture and tourism.

• The second level contains 27 subgroups which are broken down into the third level into 188 types of equipment.

The constitution of equipment ranges :

The ranges bring together services and equipment which have similar implantation logics, in the sense that they are frequently present simultaneously in the municipalities.

For the 2021 Permanent database of facilities, equipment selected are divided into three ranges :

• the proximity range includes services that are present in the largest number of municipalities. It focuses on only 34 different services, but with numerous locations (1.7 million access points). It includes, for example, building craftsmen, bakeries, general practitioners, playgrounds ;
• the intermediate range includes 44 types of equipment : for example, banks, medical analysis laboratories or swimming pools open to the public ;
• the upper range (51 types of equipment) brings together businesses such as fishmongers or hypermarkets, emergency medical services or cinemas. They are more rarely located and more often located in main cities than the services in the local range.

Otherwise, 59 types of equipment are not included in the ranges. They correspond to much rarer services or equipment or which are not primarily intended for permanent residents of the territories (example : hotels).

The purpose of the BPE is to cover the maximum of services and equipment accessible to the population, whether merchant or not.  

Concept: equipment

A facility is a service, commercial or not, accessible to the population. It can be a layout (bathing zone, remarkable space, heritage), an infrastructure (gymnasium, swimming pool, station, etc.) or a service (shops, bank, court, etc.). It is listed in the Base permanente des équipements (BPE) on January 1st of each year.

Most of the time, the establishment is the entity identified as equipment, but equipment can also refer to the service provided within an establishment (for example, a maternity service may be provided in an autonomous establishment or in a multidisciplinary establishment).

Facilities are grouped into categories called types of facilities. The types of facilities are grouped into 7 groups:

• personal services;
• businesses ;
• education ;
• health and social services ;
• transports and travel ;
• sports-leisure-culture ;
• tourism.

The nomenclature of types of equipment is updated each year.

Other types of grouping can be carried out for specific needs.

• This is the case in products of BPE in evolution. For example, the type of equipment E01G - Railway Station includes the railway stations of travelers of national (E107), regional (E108) and local interest (E109).
• This is also the case in the ranges of equipment. For example, AR03 brings together post offices (A206), post relays (A207) and postal agencies (A208).

The classification of the groupings is specific to each of the two cases, even if the groupings can be identical : the grouping concerning railway stations is identified by the codes E01G in the BPE in evolution and by ER02 in the ranges.

Equipment

Almost 2.4 million equipment are listed in the 2021 BPE.

January, 1st 2021