Legal - Maps for Thought

Disclaimer

Maps for Thought presents open data from public sources. The information is for general interest only and does not constitute professional advice or a site-specific assessment.

What this site is not

Not advice about property, insurance, planning, safety or health. For flood risk, always use the Environment Agency's (England) or Natural Resources Wales' official service.
Not a forecast. Projections are scenarios under stated assumptions.
Not exact. Many layers are interpolated, modelled or generalised. Values read from the map colour are approximate.
Not UK-wide everywhere. A lot of official data is England-only or Great Britain-only. Every layer carries a coverage badge.

Natural hazards and environmental data

The flood zone, radon, ground hazard, coastal erosion and air quality layers show modelled, indicative assessments. They are not a substitute for a site investigation, a professional survey or an official search. Do not use data from this site to make financial, legal, property or health decisions.

Accuracy and warranty

While reasonable efforts are made to verify data against the raw sources, the site is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind. Data may contain errors introduced during processing. The author accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of this information.

Terms of use

The site

Maps for Thought is a personal, non-commercial project hosted on Cloudflare. It is free, has no advertising and requires no account. The author may change or withdraw it at any time.

Data and licences

The data shown comes from third-party publishers under the licences listed on Data & sources. The atlas does not own the underlying datasets. Each credit and licence was read at the source and is reproduced in full. If you wish to reuse a dataset, check its own licence terms with its publisher.

External links and services

The site links to the data publishers and to official bodies. The author is not responsible for the content of external sites. Basemap tiles come from OpenFreeMap (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL licence). The live carbon intensity layer queries the National Energy System Operator's Carbon Intensity API (CC BY 4.0).

Intellectual property

The site code, the processing pipeline and the text of the guided stories are the author's own. Datasets remain under their publisher's licence. The 3D landmark pictures are made with Canva (Canva use licence). Place names come from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and OS Open Names (OGL v3.0 licence).

Privacy notice

Data we collect

None. The site sets no cookies, does not track visitors, does not collect email addresses, does not create accounts and stores no personal data on a server.

What is stored in your browser

Your choice of basemap, language and theme (light or dark) is saved in your browser's local storage on your device. These preferences stay on your device, are never sent to a server and can be cleared by clearing site data in your browser settings.

What is in the URL

Your map view, active layers, year and opacity are encoded in the page address (after the #). This means a link reproduces exactly what you see. This fragment stays in your browser and is not sent to the server.

Searches

Postcode and place-name searches are answered from files on this site, in your browser. What you type is never sent to another site.

External services

Your browser contacts two external services, which see your IP address as any website would:

OpenFreeMap, for the basemap tiles.
The National Energy System Operator's Carbon Intensity API, only if you switch on the live carbon intensity layer.

The locate button asks for your position only when you press it. The position is not sent or stored.

Hosting

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Workers and R2. Cloudflare may collect request logs under its own terms of service. The author does not have access to individual visitor logs.

Contact

For any questions about this site, use the Ask a question box on the map.

Last updated: November 2026.