WAID
The NWSF’s Water Incident Database (WAID) brings together water-related incident data from a wide range of sources within the UK search and rescue region. It brings together several existing sources of data, including search and rescue reports, coroners' reports and media reporting.
The key aims of WAID are:
- To provide insight into levels of risk associated with water-related activities, enabling meaningful comparisons with activities outside the water sector, and the determination of risk acceptability.
- To provide a coordinated, national approach to the capture of water-related incident data.
- To produce high quality, comprehensive data.
- To maximise value and minimise cost of data collection.
2023 saw the development of new taxonomies for the data to improve the range of activity and location data. This was used in the 2023 annual report and will continue into future reporting.
Interactive Report
The most recently published WAID data is made available as an interactive report.
WAID data is also used to inform annual reports and the UK Drowning Prevention Strategy.
Custom reports and dataset requests are considered on a case-by-case basis, subject to agreement.
Data Enhancement
The WAID enhancement project was undertaken by RoSPA, on behalf of the NWSF, to improve the WAID dataset. This was done for two primary reasons:
- The need to overturn the high number of "not recorded" outcomes, giving a more robust data set (which could more accurately measure against the UK Drowning Prevention Strategy baseline)
- To match recent updates to the WAID taxonomy
Key objectives were to:
- Provide the UK Drowning Prevention Strategy review with an up to date and robust data set
- To match the previous four-year data to the new 2023 WAID taxonomy and reconfigure ONS regional data.
Read the report and access the interactive dashboard
Contact us about WAID
Should you wish to share any data or information related to a one-off event, please contact us at info@nationalwatersafety.org.uk. If you are from a coroner’s office and wish to provide us with information, please contact us at waid@nationalwatersafety.org.uk.
If you have any further questions, please contact us at info@nationalwatersafety.org.uk.
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Governance
The WAID management group considers risks to the system and dataset and has an ongoing plan to mitigate these risks with the support of the NWSF Coordinating Group. Contracts with data providers and users, and for system hosting, are held by RoSPA, on behalf of the NWSF.
Administrators and stakeholders access the system under agreement. They are offered regular training that reflects the operational polices. The system is hosted under contract with a specialist company, which holds national certifications and works with the WAID group to identify and mitigate risks. The system works to the RoSPA framework for data governance, which includes adherence to a privacy policy, data protection, impact assessments and identification of technical and system issues. This has been externally verified (October 2018) and is periodically tested.
Data collection is subject to both in-year and year-end checks. Administrators verify records several times a year, typically monthly, to ensure completeness and accuracy.