How third-party data integrations revolutionise flood risk management

Gavin Lewis, Head of Engineering at Fathom

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Introduction

As the climate evolves, government policy shifts and regulatory requirements increase, there is more pressure than ever on engineers and flood risk professionals to have a full understanding early in the process of planning and designing of both current and future flood risk to assets, sites and projects.

There’s a growing demand for easier access to climate-conditioned, high-resolution flood data that offer this comprehensive and consistent view of risk. And flood model vendors are responding. Increasingly, third-party data is being integrated into flood models - not as a replacement for publicly available data but as a complement to it.

Fathom is proud to have worked with Jacobs to integrate our award-winning global flood maps into Flood Modeller. In this post, I outline how seamless access to our climate-adjusted data, working in tandem with other datasets, will help save users’ time and make their lives easier.

Fathom’s flood risk data

Fathom is a flood risk intelligence company created out of Bristol University and led by top-tier flood scientists and experts. We have a long track record of publishing our scientific research in peer-reviewed journals and our methodologies are made freely available to anyone for scrutiny.

We provide flood risk data and computational flood models that provide an understanding of flood risk at a global, countrywide, regional and local scale, and allow the three major sub-perils (pluvial, fluvial and coastal) to be modelled separately.

Underpinned by our cutting-edge global terrain dataset incorporating the best available local LiDAR data, our scientifically validated maps and models enable users

to calculate the depth, extent and water surface elevation for each return period and climate scenario from now until 2100.

Flood Modeller users can now access Fathom’s flood maps directly within Flood Modeller's intuitive GIS interface, allowing you to rapidly assess flood risk to enhance project initiation, site selection and infrastructure planning.

The benefits of data integration

There are, of course, many pieces of the puzzle when it comes to assessing and quantifying risk. Flood Modeller supports the overlay of multiple datasets for a consistent, integrated analysis.

In the past decade, high-quality data has become much easier to discover and access. Recognising this, Jacobs has made expanding data integrations a key focus for Flood Modeller’s development.

Integrating data directly into the software allows the user to streamline their workflows and build a view of risk early on, without having to discover, download and reprocess datasets from numerous sources.

Using national datasets for initial screening

As well as the mapping data from the likes of the Ordnance Survey Data Hub, several national datasets from the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) river gauge data are integrated into Flood Modeller.

Overlaying this data can give you a really good instant understanding of flood risk in the area you’re interested in. They are generally freely available, used by national bodies and an excellent starting point for assessing risk. However, there are limitations:

• Coverage varies between government bodies and jurisdictions – the Environment Agency only covers major rivers in England and not smaller channels, for example.

• The flood maps often only cover one or two return periods, offering limited flexibility for evaluating a range of risk scenarios or tailoring decisions to specific tolerance levels, such as infrastructure design standards or insurance thresholds.

• The sources of risk are not always delineated, so you cannot differentiate pluvial flooding from coastal or fluvial, and many cover present-day scenarios only.

• They tend to be static, giving you a flood outline, which is fine for initial screening, but for flood depths and more granular information you need a more high-resolution dataset.

• Crucially, most of these datasets also focus on present-day conditions, offering little to no insight into how flood risk might evolve under different climate scenarios. As a result, they fall short for long-term planning or resilience assessments that need to account for changing rainfall patterns, sea level rise or shifting river dynamics.

And that’s where Fathom comes in.

Fathom’s data for a flexible, detailed approach

Fathom's global flood data offers global coverage at ~30m resolution, covering multiple countries and include pluvial, fluvial and coastal flood sources, which you can model separately.

It provides eight different return periods (from 1-in-5 to 1-in-1000 years), and offers flood depth and extent information as well as water elevation depths. And it supports climate scenarios until 2100, showing you the potential future flood risks, as well as the current risk.

Transforming risk management processes

I hope this demonstrates how third-party data integrations, such as Fathom, as a supplement to national datasets, can transform the speed and efficiency with which you assess flood risk.

When used in conjunction with publicly available data, your view of risk becomes much more detailed, granular and consistent and, as it’s accessed directly from within the GIS software, you don’t have to spend time downloading or reprocessing it. You can visualise this data seamlessly within Flood Modeller's map view and interrogate detailed flood hazard information to support more rapid assessments and, ultimately, more informed decision-making.

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Gavin Lewis

Gavin is a civil engineer with a strong commercial background in spatial data and technology, specialising in sectors such as infrastructure, transportation, insurance and the public sector.

As Head of Engineering at Fathom, he supports clients globally by providing advanced solutions for identifying and mitigating physical risks, particularly in the areas of flooding and climate change.