Marking a significant advance for environmental science, the UK Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure (FDRI) has announced the release of two new collaborative datasets: UK-Flow15 and CAMELS-GB v2.
These large-sample, high-resolution hydrology datasets offer unprecedented access to sub-daily river flow and hydrometeorological data across hundreds of UK catchments.
Matt Fry, UKCEH environmental informatics manager and FDRI data lead, said: “This is a big step forward for the hydrological community, offering streamlined access to large-scale data collections. Both datasets are the result of extensive collaboration across universities, measuring authorities, and data providers. FDRI played a pivotal role in enabling access, facilitating partnerships, and supporting long term archiving and versioning through the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC).”
UK-Flow15: Advancing river flow data across the UK
Developed by Felipe Fileni, a PhD researcher at Newcastle University now working with FDRI as a hydrological data analyst, UK-Flow15 is a collation of 15-minute river flow observations from 1,369 gauging stations across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
With over 1.8 billion individual measurements, some dating back to 1948, the dataset provides a comprehensive and consistent picture of river flow variability across the UK, that will enable the development of the next generation of national flood risk models.
Data sourced from APIs and exclusive collaborations with UK measuring authorities
Average of 40 years of continuous data per station
Extensive quality control including visual inspection and automated statistical checks, versioned with a permanent Digital Object Identifier
Supports the development of CAMELS-GB v2 and future hydrological research
The dataset’s creation spanned four years and involved harmonising disparate data formats and structures. Future updates will include river level time series and newly released records, ensuring UK-Flow15 remains a dynamic resource for the hydrology community.
CAMELS-GB v2: Expanding the hydrometeorological horizon
Led by associate professor in hydrology, Gemma Coxon, at the University of Bristol, CAMELS-GB v2 builds on the success of the original CAMELS-GB dataset. It now includes:
Extended daily hydrometeorological timeseries from 1970–2022 for 671 catchments
New hourly data for precipitation, river flows and levels for 671 catchments, based on UK-Flow15
New groundwater level data for 55 wells
New catchment attributes reflecting land cover change, peak flows, and human impacts
With data from 671 catchments, CAMELS-GB v2 is freely available under an open government licence to the hydrological community, collating billions of observations from across Great Britain.
Gemma Coxon said: “CAMELS-GB v2 provides exciting new opportunities for environmental analyses across Great Britain. This includes the development of common frameworks for model evaluation and benchmarking and a wealth of new information, particularly for flood analyses and other short-duration extremes. The dataset represents a community effort made possible by FDRI, regulators and research institutes.”
The datasets are available from the EIDC here: UK-Flow15 and CAMELS-GBv2.
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