World-leading research, innovations and solutions
At this year's Flood & Coast conference UKCEH scientists will be demonstrating our world-leading flood and drought research.
We invite you to visit our booth to find out more about our innovations and solutions.
National monitoring
UKCEH curates and quality controls the UK’s river flow data, making many years of data available via the National River Flow Archive (NRFA). We also have experience in designing, operating and evaluating monitoring and observation sites, including the COSMOS-UK network of 50 soil moisture monitoring sites.
Informing Policy
UKCEH science has underpinned policy relating to flood risk management and the impacts of climate change since the mid-1970s. We play an active role in the development of national and international monitoring standards for hydrometry through our roles in the British and European Standards Committees.
Open data
The long-term environmental data hosted by UKCEH make a difference, informing research, policy-making, commercial innovation and conservation action all around the world. We are committed to making the data we manage available for others to use.
Flood forecasting and estimation
Our state-of-the-art hydrological models and tools are used for realtime flood forecasting from hours to seasons ahead and at national and local scales. We develop flood impact-based forecasting tools and the UK industry standard Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) for rainfall and river flood frequency estimation.
Nature-based solutions
We explore nature-based solutions through our interdisciplinary modelling, such as rewilding, planting woodlands and changing land use practices. We use our expertise in monitoring and modelling ecological and hydrological processes, including water quality, to understand the effectiveness of both existing and planned interventions in urban and rural areas.
Climate Change
We’ve developed new approaches to understand the sensitivity of a hydrological system to climatic changes with the advantage of more readily being able to deal with large ensemble model outputs. This enables us to estimate changes to peak river flows at any point on the river network over the next 50 years.
Innovation and training
UKCEH has an active programme of innovation, including a current focus on remote monitoring of flood flows using drone and satellite imagery. We have a long history of engaging in knowledge sharing, capacity building, and providing formal and informal training both in the UK and overseas.
Hydrological modelling
We design and develop models to aid our understanding of hydrological systems, including the Grid-to-Grid model that sits at the heart of the Flood Forecasting Centre and Scottish Flood Forecasting Service, and the JULES model used by the UK’s Met Office to forecast weather and climate.
Hydrological processes
UKCEH advances process understanding through field and laboratory experiments. We are currently leading the planning and design of a digitally-enabled Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure (FDRI) which will have UK-wide applicability. With a successful business case its implementation will begin in spring 2024 to advance our understanding of how, when and where floods and droughts occur; enabling improved predictions, robust assessment of impacts and implementation of appropriate mitigation measures.
Our national role
We are a strategic delivery partner for the Natural Environment Research Council and deliver impartial environmental science to benefit the UK research community, governments, businesses, and wider society. Our science programmes such as FDRI and COSMOS-UK support the community through provision of infrastructures for the better understanding of floods and droughts.
We work with research partners to delivery national capability programmes including Hydro-JULES, AgZero+, Canari, Chamfer which enable the community to observe, experiment, measure, understand and predict environmental processes, interconnection, status and change.