Hydrological sections for England, Scotland and Wales with associated river catchment 2023

Great Britain's hydrologically defined sections, including river channels and coastal areas up to the mean high water line for England and Wales. Each polygon section contains attributes for devolved administration, regional boundaries, river catchment, and Water Framework Directive waterbody IDs. The dataset is provided by the Government Digital Service and is available in both geographical (WGS84) and projected (British National Grid) coordinate reference systems.

Use Cases

• Modeling pollutant transport and ecological status based on river catchment boundaries.
• Analyzing administrative responsibility for water management based on devolved and regional administration attributes.
• Integrating hydrological data with other environmental datasets using the Water Framework Directive waterbody IDs.

Strengths

• Covers the whole of Great Britain, including England, Scotland, and Wales.
• Includes multiple administrative and environmental attribute layers per section, such as catchment and waterbody IDs.
• Available in two standard coordinate reference systems (WGS84 and British National Grid) for flexibility.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service, likely aggregating data from Fish Health Inspectorate, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, and Ordnance Survey.

Collection Method

Likely compiled from official administrative and environmental agency boundaries.

Time Range

2023 (implied from title).

Freshness

2023 (implied from title), but last updated date is unknown.

Geography

Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales).