From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcatchment areacatch‧ment ar‧e‧a /ˈkætʃmənt ˌeəriə $ -ˌeriə/ noun [countable] 1 British English the catchment area of a school, hospital etc is the area that its students, patients etc come from2 HE technical the area that a river or lake gets water from
Examples from the Corpus
catchment area• Neither hospital was sufficiently remote from its catchment area to warrant the intervention of the centre to impose closure.• To prevent your club becoming too large, restrict its catchment area.• Prep schools have no secure catchment area, they have always depended on the forces of the market place for their survival.• The closure was doubly important because the catchment area covered the inner London districts of Westminster, Paddington and Hammersmith.• The catchment area shown for the funnel is very small.• The hospitals more remote from their catchment area were thus the natural early candidates for closure.From Longman Business Dictionarycatchment areacatch‧ment a‧re‧a /ˈkætʃmənt ˌeəriə-ˌeriə/ noun [countable] MARKETINGthe area from which a store gets its customers, a school gets its students etcThe retailer provided a map of the store’s catchment area. 