Historic Flood Defence Benefit Areas for England and Wales

A historic spatial polygon dataset from the UK Environment Agency, displaying areas forecast to benefit from new or improved flood defence schemes over a five-year planning period. The data includes projects from the Environment Agency, Local Authorities, and Internal Drainage Boards with construction budgets over £100k. It was supplied to support a government and insurance industry agreement on flood insurance provision.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical spatial distribution of flood defence investments based on the polygon areas.
• Studying the relationship between planned infrastructure and insurance principles based on the dataset's stated purpose.
• Mapping indicative funding allocations for the first financial year of defence projects.
• Researching the inclusion criteria for flood defence projects within a Medium Term Plan.

Strengths

• Data includes all Environment Agency projects over £100k for a five-year period.
• Covers equivalent schemes for Local Authorities and Internal Drainage Boards.
• Attributes include the number of households and land areas contributing to government outcome measures.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is explicitly marked as historic and not for current analysis.
• Funding figures for years two through five are indicative and not guaranteed.

Provenance

Source

Environment Agency, UK.

Collection Method

Planned and compiled by the Environment Agency as part of its Medium Term Plan.

Time Range

Covers a rolling five-year planning period; specific years are not stated.

Freshness

A new dataset was to be made available annually, but the last update date for this specific version is unknown.

Geography

England and Wales.