Thermal Properties of Bedrock in Great Britain at 1:250,000 Scale

Polygon-based geological data for Great Britain and the Isle of Man, attributed with thermal properties for bedrock. The dataset, created by the British Geological Survey, includes modelled values for thermal conductivity, diffusivity, specific heat capacity, and density at a 1:250,000 scale. It is based on the work of Rollin (1987) and Gale (2004, 2005) and is available as ESRI shapefiles under a BGS data licence.

Use Cases

• Assess suitability for closed-loop ground source heat pumps based on bedrock thermal conductivity.
• Evaluate potential for open-loop geothermal systems based on thermal diffusivity and specific heat capacity.
• Model subsurface heat flow for deeper geothermal assessments using attributed geological properties.
• Create regional geothermal resource maps based on the 1:250,000 scale polygon coverage.

Strengths

• Data is attributed with four specific modelled thermal properties: thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, specific heat capacity, and density.
• Spatial coverage includes onshore Great Britain and the Isle of Man.
• Based on published geological work by Rollin (1987) and Gale (2004, 2005).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the source platform and the specific scale of 1:250,000.

Provenance

Source

British Geological Survey (BGS)

Collection Method

Vector-based, irregular polygon coverage derived from geological mapping and modelling.

Time Range

Based on work from 1987, 2004, and 2005; temporal coverage of the underlying geological data is not specified.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 08:27:50.586581; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Britain and the Isle of Man.