Flood Risk for Extreme Events (FREE): Historical Rainfall Data and Maps from the Quantifying Flood Risk of Extreme Events using Density Forecasts Based on a New Digital Archive and Weather Ensemble Predictions Project

The Quantifying Flood Risk of Extreme Events using Density Forecasts Based on a New Digital Archive and Weather Ensemble Predictions Project is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Flood Risk for Extreme Events (FREE) Research Programme project (Round 1 - NE/E002013/1 - Duration January 2007 - December 2008) led by Dr Patrick McSharry, University of Oxford. The dataset contains a collection of rainfall depth maxima data, dating back to 1860, plus associated description documents and rainfall maps of extreme events across the UK, have been used. All of these products have been digitised from the paper version of the British Rainfall publication, and are now archived at the BADC to enable easy access for future use and the wider community.

Floods in the UK are often caused by heavy rainfall lasting from minutes to weeks. Efficient management and mitigation of flood risk, especially surface water flooding in urban areas, requires accurate and reliable precipitation forecasts as inputs to flood risk models. Houses in flat areas are particularly at risk and meeting the shortage of houses in the south-east requires building on these areas. To estimate the flood hazard risk in order to try to protect these buildings, accurate rainfall predictions are needed. However, the connection between record rainfall and flooding is highly nonlinear, so that rainfall predictions must also say how likely rainfall is at any time - calculating the probability of rainfall.

Extreme rainfalls caused devastating floods in Boscastle in 2004 and Lynmouth in 1952, but the causes and pattern of rainfall was different. Therefore, scientists also need to know what pattern of rainfall caused the flooding.

This research aims to get good quality predictions of the probability of rainfall by combining advanced methods from statistics, the output from a new supercomputer model of the weather, and a new computer archive of exteme rainfalls going back to 1866 (and up to 1968), provided by a specialist company Hydro-GIS Ltd. It also aims to produce an automatic system for discovering the most likely pattern in the predicted rainfalls. The new prediction system and data will be freely available over the internet for use by the government and universities.

Date (Publication): 2008-12-10T03:19:22

Date (Creation): 2008-12-10T03:19:22

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da

Citation identifier: NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Hydro-GIS Ltd		unknown	Author
NERC FREE Campaign participants		unknown	Author
Unavailable	McSharry, Patrick	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Rodda, Harvey	Unavailable	Author
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Custodian
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	pointofContact
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Series

Keywords

FREE
Rainfall
Maps

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1867-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 1968-12-30T23:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Contact data centre for format details.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/20040816.html	Flooding in north Cornwall - 16 August 2004

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://hydro-gis.co.uk/	Hydro-GIS

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.354/abstract	A digital archive of extreme rainfalls in the British Isles from 1866 to 1968 based on British Rainfall

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/projects_contacts.html	FREE Projects and Contacts

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/FREE_scienceplan.pdf	The science of flooding

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/FREE_implementplan.pdf	Implementation Plan

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/FREE_200805progress-report.pdf	Summary Progress Report May 2008

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/free_intro.html	Other FREE Projects

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/submission.html	Instructions for FREE data providers

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/OxJan08-RoddaHarvey.pdf	An Overview of Extreme Rainfall Events from the British Rainfall Archive 1866-1968.

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/Data_inputs_to_FREE_projects.html	Data inputs to FREE projects

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/free/FREE_200810progress-report.pdf	Progress Report October 2008

Hierarchy level: Series

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.

Metadata

File identifier: 108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Series

Hierarchy level name: series

Date stamp: 2025-11-17T03:26:15

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Point of contact

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