UK Flood Risk Extents for Rivers and Sea Under Climate Change Scenarios

Four modeled scenarios show land at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea in the UK, considering climate change allowances. The datasets, produced by the Environment Agency, distinguish between defended and undefended areas for different annual exceedance probabilities. Climate change projections are based on the UKCP18 RCP 8.5 scenario for the 2080s epoch and sea level rise to 2125.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional flood exposure based on defended and undefended scenarios.
• Assessing climate change impacts on future flood risk using UKCP18 RCP 8.5 projections.
• Comparing river and sea flood extents for different annual exceedance probabilities (AEP).
• Informing land-use planning decisions based on broad-scale flood risk extents.

Strengths

• Includes four distinct scenarios combining defended/undefended status with specific annual exceedance probabilities.
• Incorporates climate change projections from the UKCP18 RCP 8.5 model for the 2080s and sea level rise to 2125.
• Explicitly documents the assumptions regarding flood defense operation and climate change allowances.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The data is designed for area-level indication and is not suitable for assessing risk to individual properties.

Provenance

Source

Environment Agency

Collection Method

Modeled flood risk extents based on climate projections and defense data.

Time Range

Climate change scenarios project to the 2080s epoch (2070-2125) and sea level rise to 2125.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 14:39:20.241012; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom