Geological River Scour Susceptibility Assessment for Great Britain

GeoScour v2 provides 18 GIS layers assessing river scour susceptibility across Great Britain. The British Geological Survey created this three-tiered dataset to model geological factors influencing scour, from catchment overviews to detailed riverine information.

Use Cases

• Incorporate Tier 1 catchment stability data, including typical response type and evolution, into national catchment management plans.
• Use Tier 2 geological properties like flood accommodation space and catchment run-off potential for detailed natural flood management analysis.
• Integrate Tier 3 factors such as material mineralogy, strength, and river sinuosity as baseline inputs into complex hydraulic scour models.
• Analyze summary statistics for worst, average, and best-case scenarios of underlying surface geology scour susceptibility from Tier 2 data.

Strengths

• Contains 18 distinct GIS data layers providing multi-resolution analysis.
• Structured in three tiers (catchment, detailed catchment, riverine) for different stakeholder needs and model complexities.
• Covers the entire spatial geography of Great Britain for comprehensive national assessment.

Limitations

• Excludes hydraulic or hydrodynamic factors, focusing solely on geological influences, which limits standalone predictive capability.
• Tier 3 data is under a restricted license, while only Tiers 1 and 2 are Open Government Licence, potentially limiting access to the most detailed information.

Provenance

Source

British Geological Survey (BGS)

Collection Method

Geological assessment and GIS layer creation.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Great Britain