Canada’s demographics are changing more rapidly than ever, making it increasingly important to have a strong understanding of rurality. Properly identifying and classifying a space’s rurality can influence how research interprets geographic disparities, what policies are applied, and how resources are allocated. However, an extensive review of existing definitions of rurality in Canada revealed several shortcomings, including a limited scope in measurement approaches, a lack of small-area assessments, an absence of service-specific rurality measures, and insufficient transparency in the generation of rurality indices. To address these gaps, the Spatial Determinants of Health Lab adapted the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+) to the Canadian context, creating the Canadian Accessibility/Remoteness Index (CARI+). This presentation will provide an overview of the CARI+ development process, including the methodology used to generate standardized and normalized values, the identification of meaningful rurality groupings, and a comparison between CARI+ and the widely used Index of Remoteness (IOR) in Canada. This foundational discussion will complement the related presentations on service-specific applications of CARI+ and strategies for engaging end-users with GIS-generated outputs.