Southwest Environmental Limited

Obtain Flood Depths from GIS Data 

It used to be the case that when ordering flood data from the Environment Agency you would pay £60 for the privilege. A few years ago the EA started supplying it for free (never understood why) and now in some areas of London they are saying that they can only provide the raw data, because they can't afford the staffs time to create site specific reports. . . . .

This leaves us in a bit quandary, as we rely on rely on maps (PMCL No LAN1001682) such as the one to the left for writing our reports.

Instead we are now given a 300MB zip files containing GIS flood depth information for large areas of London. Which can be downloaded from here: GIS Flood Data for London 

The reasons for this change of delivery was explained thusly:

Your request for a P4 and 8 falls under the exemption in provision 6(1)(a) and (b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) which states that

‘……6.—(1) Where an applicant requests that the information be made available in a particular form or format, a public authority shall make it so available, unless—

(a) it is reasonable for it to make the information available in another form or format; or

(b) the information is already publicly available and easily accessible to the applicant in another form or format………………’

On this occasion we are not providing the information in the Product 4 and 8 format, for the following reasons:                                                                                                                                                     

·         Complying with the preference would incur a significant cost, which the public authority [The Environment Agency] cannot pass on to the requester;

·         Using a Product 5/6/7 allows us to make the information available at a lower cost; and

·         The impact on the available resources of the public authority [The Environment Agency], of supplying a Product 5/6/7, is therefore much less. 

The image to the right shows the data coverage area, this being issued by the KSL team, which cover the eastern "half" of London. The HNL team cover most of the rest of London. So if you reuire flood depths for sites in:

• City of London
• Southwark
• Tower Hamlets
• Newham
• Lewisham
• Greenwhich

Then you will likely have to interrogate the supplied GIS information and retrieve flood depths.

If you would like us to do this for you then we can. Please contact us, and we provide a written quotation.