Report catchments

If the area to investigate is not a standard geography or if you have not investigated it before you will need to create a new catchment.

Catchments are defined in reports by the following:

Catchment details	Value
Type	Travel Time Distance
Travel Time sub type	Drivetime Drive Distance Walk Time
Distance sub type	Distance Ring
Time of day (Drivetime only)	Peak Off-peak Night
Unit (Distance only)	Miles Kilometres
Catchment Size(s)	Measured minutes (Drivetime and Walk Time catchments) Measured distance in miles (Drive Distance catchments) Measured distance in Miles or Kilometres (Distance Ring catchments)

Drivetime

A Drivetime catchment uses the roads in the specific area and calculates the distance you can travel from a specified point in a specific time (in minutes). This modelled data takes into account potential traffic flow at different times of the day.

Peak, Off-peak and Night are not specific times of the day, as they vary depending on the location. For example the peak traffic flow in London at rush hour will be different to that in smaller cities in the UK.

However as a general rule the time of day can be defined as:

Time of day	Approximate time of day
Peak	7am – 9.30/10am and 4/4.30pm – 7 pm
Off-Peak	9.30/10am – 4/4.30pm
Night	7pm – 7am

Drive Distance

A Drive Distance catchment uses the roads in the specific area and a specific distance (in miles only) from a specified point. They have a similar shape to other Travel Time catchments, but the road speed is fixed at 60 mph for all road types. Therefore the distance travelled equates to 1 mile/minute and they are measured in distance, not travel time.

Walk Time

A Walk Time catchment uses the roads in the specific area and calculates the distance you can travel from a specified point in a specific time (in minutes). This modelled data is based on the average walking speed, and have a similar shape to Walk Time catchments.

Note: The option to create Walk Time catchments is subscription-dependent, and therefore may not be available to you.

Distance Ring

A Distance Ring catchment is "as the crow flies" or straight-line distance. It therefore draws a circle of a specific distance (in miles or kilometres) around the area of interest.

For a general procedure of creating report catchments, see Creating a catchment from a report.

You can also create:

single or multiple travel time or distance catchments from the Manage Data page or the Mapping page. For more details, see Creating catchments.
a catchment by combining brick level geographies. For further details, see Combining bricks to create a catchment.
a catchment which you draw by hand directly onto the map. For more details, see Drawing a catchment.
a catchment from an imported brick geography. For further details, see Importing a data file.
a catchment from an imported shape file. For further details, see Importing a shapefile.