GB Deprivation Context
Open Road Risk uses small-area deprivation as a contextual predictor, not as a road attribute and not as a causal explanation. For GB coverage the pipeline keeps the three national indices separate, then exposes shared within-country decile columns to the model.
Sources
| Country | Source | Geography | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | Indices of Deprivation (IoD) | LSOA 2021 | 2025 | MHCLG File 7 deciles |
| Wales | Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) | LSOA 2011 | 2019 | Ranks converted to within-Wales deciles |
| Scotland | Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) | Data Zone 2011 | 2020 | Overall decile from SIMD; income and employment ranks converted to within-Scotland deciles |
The processed polygon layer is data/processed/context/deprivation_areas_gb.parquet. Link-level assignment is by road-link centroid within the deprivation polygon, with a short nearest fallback for boundary-edge cases. Assignment provenance is written to data/provenance/deprivation_gb_provenance.json.
Features used
| Feature | Meaning |
|---|---|
deprivation_country |
Country/index used for the assigned area |
deprivation_source |
IoD 2025, WIMD 2019, or SIMD 2020v2 |
deprivation_area_code |
LSOA/Data Zone code assigned to the road link |
deprivation_area_type |
LSOA2021, LSOA2011, or DZ2011 |
overall_decile_within_country |
Overall deprivation decile within the source country |
income_decile_within_country |
Income-domain decile within the source country |
employment_decile_within_country |
Employment-domain decile within the source country |
Deciles run from 1 (most deprived) to 10 (least deprived), but only within the source country/index. A Scottish decile 1, Welsh decile 1, and English decile 1 are not a single GB-wide most-deprived tenth.
Join and coverage notes
- England uses IoD 2025 LSOA 2021 codes and the England/Wales OA 2021 boundary file dissolved to LSOA 2021.
- Wales uses WIMD 2019 attributes and Welsh LSOA 2011 polygons.
- Scotland uses SIMD 2020v2 attributes and 2011 Data Zone polygons.
deprivation_assignment_methodrecords whether a link was assigned by polygon containment, nearest fallback, or left unmatched.
Role in the pipeline
These features sit alongside population density, rural/urban context, terrain grade, and road-network features in Stage 2. The first GB pass deliberately uses only country dummies plus overall, income, and employment deciles. Source-specific domains such as crime, housing, community safety, or access to services are left out until there is a deliberate modelling reason to add them.