RoSPA, in collaboration with the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF), has published the Water Incident Database (WAID) enhancement project report.

WAID brings together water-related incident data from a wide range of sources within the UK, including search and rescue reports, coroners' reports and media reporting.

The project reviewed the 2019-23 WAID published data in order to improve the WAID dataset, 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.

The data was reviewed to update outcomes, regional areas, and new taxonomies to inform the UK Drowning Prevention Strategy Review and to improve data for external stakeholders such as Water Safety Partnerships to better understand incidents in their area for prevention and educational activities. It involved extensive work, including contacting coroners, researching media reports (where appropriate) and adding previously unknown incidents to the data set.

The project resulted in several key insights and outcomes:

• A slight increase in overall water-related fatalities

• A significant reduction in ‘Not Recorded’ outcomes

• An expected increase in accidental fatalities

• Improved activity details.

The report has informed the UK Drowning Prevention Strategy review and will provide local organisations and water prevention practitioners with better data in their local prevention work.

You can see the report and PowerBi dashboard here.

Rachael Brogan is RoSPA's Policy Officer (Leisure).