Members of the public told us they wanted to see maps showing flooding and flood risk in Edinburgh. They were not aware the SEPA website already hosts such maps. So we’re sharing some notes here on what they show, and how to access them. The below is from the Methods section of the forthcoming ABCD report.
We knew from the one-off survey we ran at Edinburgh Climate Festival 2023 that the public want to see flood maps showing past floods and future risk. We found ready-made maps on the SEPA website, but they are under strict intellectual property rules. Therefore, an approach was taken of generating a map, and reporting in writing on the patterns it showed, rather than sharing the map. Similarly, it is not possible to share a video tutorial on using the SEPA flood maps, as to do so might infringe copyright. So here is a simple set of steps to follow, to view flood risk:
-
Click Start Now, and then read and accept the terms and conditions
-
Zoom in, to the Edinburgh area (or wherever you want to examine)
-
Use the layers button (‘Map Content’) to select either River Flooding risk, Coastal Flooding or Surface Water and Small Watercourses Flooding. Choosing just one of the three makes the map reasonably clear to read.
- In each of the three flooding types listed above, you can select high, medium and low likelihood - we suggest just picking high and medium.
{fig-alt=”the icon looks like a pile of layers”}
-
Click ‘Map Key’ to display the map legend.
-
If the legend is empty, and the map is not showing any colour highlighting, you may need to zoom in closer, and wait a couple of seconds for the colour highlighting to be added. Note that when you grab and drag the map to pan to a different area, at first the area does not show the highlighting - you need to release the drag and wait for a couple of seconds for it to refresh.
There is another online flood map called Dynamic Coast, built by the Scottish Government, and under intellectual property of commercial firms, so again, we’re not able to share screenshot images or video from the system.
The terms and conditions state the user may print up to 50 copies. And the Dynamic Coast maps should not be used to assess an individual property. Uncertainty around the data means that results for a particular local area may need further research. No guarantee is given as to accuracy. “..please note that coastal erosion events reflect chaotic processes and operate at a small spatial scale, so these national-scale maps cannot be used to inform detailed property-level assessments. They are intended as a broad planning tool”
The map launches with a view showing Montrose, but you can easily pan and zoom to display Edinburgh’s coast. If anything, the Dynamic Coast map is more difficult to interpret because the many layers use similar shades of red. It would require quite a bit of time to be able to draw firm conclusions from it.
It shouldn’t be this difficult to share flood maps that have been created using public money. However, there are open source tools that citizen scientists can use for mapping this data ourselves. If a new volunteer wants to come forward to do that work, and maybe create some online tutorial materials about how to do so, that would be most welcome. Just send an email to me using the address on the About page.
All best, Pauline