Urban growth, new roads, runways and infrastructure more generally mean that around 11% of England is already urbanised and approximately 50% is disturbed by the sight, noise, and movement associated with this development. Intrusion maps identify those areas that remain unaffected by development and therefore may be particularly sensitive to development in the future.
Through painstaking investigation LUC recreated the methodology developed by Ash Consulting in the 1990s (which identified levels of intrusion in the 1960s and 1990s for CPRE and the Countryside Commission) and with the use of a wide range of digital datasets applied the methodology to the situation in 2007. This enables the identification of clear trends in intrusion over the last 45 years at the national and regional level.
We carefully designed these new maps of intrusion with visual impairments and usability in mind. The result was a set of powerful tools that were widely reported in the local and national press and acclaimed by Mapperz (identifying the best in GIS tools across Europe) as among the “newest, fastest, cleanest and most user friendly maps that are available online” - see here
The maps are also featured in the "Changing Rural Environments" chapter of the Understanding GCSE Geography textbook for AQA.
The maps continue to help inform understanding of planning and development, and are used both by professionals and the general public. They provide one of the few consistent approaches to monitoring large-scale change that are available in a readily digestible form.
Read more on the CPRE website
