Geography in practice: access to green and blue spaces

In the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) 2025, the government reaffirmed its ambition to ensure that everyone can reach a green or blue space within a 15-minute walk of their home. This is known as the ‘15-minute commitment’.

To understand whether this ambition is being realised, and to provide high-quality, reusable data for others, Defra has been developing a new set of official statistics in development. These statistics measure access to green and blue space at the household level, offering fine-grained insights on access to nature across England.

Behind this work is a complex piece of spatial analysis. Defra’s data engineers and scientists have built a large-scale network model that calculates the shortest walkable route from millions of households to nearby green and blue spaces, using access points, road and path networks.

In this webinar, learn how Defra produces these statistics, how they will evolve over time, and the technical challenges of modelling millions of walking routes at scale.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).
• This event will be held on Microsoft Teams and joining instructions will be included in your confirmation email.

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