Paired rainfall and high-flow event timeseries, statistics, and extraction method for 1203 stations and catchments in Great Britain recorded during 1990-2016 [UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite]
https://doi.org/10.5285/663b9078-ff16-48b2-a3d0-a87f98d1143f
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The UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite consists of:
- a procedure to identify and extract paired rainfall-high-flow events from paired time-series,
- the dataset of 174,450 events identified when applied to open-access UK precipitation and flow data for 1203 river gauging stations and their upstream catchments,
- a database of 63 rainfall statistics and runoff signatures derived from those events.
- a procedure to identify and extract paired rainfall-high-flow events from paired time-series,
- the dataset of 174,450 events identified when applied to open-access UK precipitation and flow data for 1203 river gauging stations and their upstream catchments,
- a database of 63 rainfall statistics and runoff signatures derived from those events.
Publication date: 2026-04-08
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Formats
Comma-separated values (CSV), R script, png
Spatial information
Study area
Spatial representation type
Tabular (text)
Spatial reference system
OSGB 1936 / British National Grid
Spatial resolution
1000 metres
Temporal information
Temporal extent
1990-01-01 to 2016-12-31
Temporal resolution
15 minute
Provenance & quality
Rainfall, river flow and catchment boundaries/descriptors are inputs to the UKCEH-FEDS event extraction method, which produces the paired rainfall-flow events that make up the UKCEH-FEDS dataset and database as outputs.
Rainfall
Rainfall is obtained from the gridded CEH-GEAR1hr v2, transformed to catchment-average values using National River Flow Archive (NRFA) catchment boundaries for the catchment upstream of each station. Extraction was performed in R, using the extract function from the raster package. This extracts rainfall data from all 1-km cells touching or inside the catchment boundary; the catchment-averaging calculation weighted partially-inside cells in proportion to the fraction of the cell inside the catchment boundary.
Input River Flow
Gauged river flows were obtained from UK-Flow15. These data originate from the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru, Department for Infrastructure, and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Additional quality control/processing steps were applied, consisting of:
- complete removal of 68 stations with truncated flows, continuity issues or major issues affecting the entire series,
- partial removal of 35 flow records with truncated flows, continuity issues or major issues affecting a portion of the series,
- interpolation across 50000 timesteps at 554 stations to eliminate data spikes
- removal of 75 days of data across 20 stations to remove exceptional values and high truncations.
Linear interpolation was then used to fill all gaps in all 15-minute flow records, with no upper limit to the size of the gap filled, performed in R using the approx function from the stats package. Linear interpolation was also used to resample 566 hours of irregularly gauged flow data at two stations: Potford Brook at Sandyford Bridge, and Tern at Eaton upon Tern.
Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) catchment descriptors
Flood Estimation Handbook catchment descriptors are used to characterize catchments in UKCEH-FEDS, and in the event extraction method to estimate the maximum time after which a rainfall event can affect gauged flow at a station. Catchment descriptors were extracted via the NRFA API in R using the catalogue function from the rnrfa package with no additional arguments.
Event extraction and output
No additional processing of the input timeseries takes place during or after the procedure by which events are extracted. Some FEH catchment descriptors (station suitability, AREA, BFIHOST19SCALED, FARL2015, URBEXT2015) are categorized broadly and these categories are used in the output file names.
Rainfall
Rainfall is obtained from the gridded CEH-GEAR1hr v2, transformed to catchment-average values using National River Flow Archive (NRFA) catchment boundaries for the catchment upstream of each station. Extraction was performed in R, using the extract function from the raster package. This extracts rainfall data from all 1-km cells touching or inside the catchment boundary; the catchment-averaging calculation weighted partially-inside cells in proportion to the fraction of the cell inside the catchment boundary.
Input River Flow
Gauged river flows were obtained from UK-Flow15. These data originate from the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru, Department for Infrastructure, and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Additional quality control/processing steps were applied, consisting of:
- complete removal of 68 stations with truncated flows, continuity issues or major issues affecting the entire series,
- partial removal of 35 flow records with truncated flows, continuity issues or major issues affecting a portion of the series,
- interpolation across 50000 timesteps at 554 stations to eliminate data spikes
- removal of 75 days of data across 20 stations to remove exceptional values and high truncations.
Linear interpolation was then used to fill all gaps in all 15-minute flow records, with no upper limit to the size of the gap filled, performed in R using the approx function from the stats package. Linear interpolation was also used to resample 566 hours of irregularly gauged flow data at two stations: Potford Brook at Sandyford Bridge, and Tern at Eaton upon Tern.
Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) catchment descriptors
Flood Estimation Handbook catchment descriptors are used to characterize catchments in UKCEH-FEDS, and in the event extraction method to estimate the maximum time after which a rainfall event can affect gauged flow at a station. Catchment descriptors were extracted via the NRFA API in R using the catalogue function from the rnrfa package with no additional arguments.
Event extraction and output
No additional processing of the input timeseries takes place during or after the procedure by which events are extracted. Some FEH catchment descriptors (station suitability, AREA, BFIHOST19SCALED, FARL2015, URBEXT2015) are categorized broadly and these categories are used in the output file names.
Licensing and constraints
This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence 
Cite this dataset as:
Vesuviano, G.; Fry, M.; Swain, O.; Cooper, H.; Fileni, F.; Chevuturi, A.; Khamis, D. (2026). Paired rainfall and high-flow event timeseries, statistics, and extraction method for 1203 stations and catchments in Great Britain recorded during 1990-2016 [UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite]. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/663b9078-ff16-48b2-a3d0-a87f98d1143f
Related
Correspondence/contact details
Other contacts
Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk
Rights holder
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Rights holder
Newcastle University
Additional metadata
Keywords
Funding
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/X019063/1
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/S007512/1
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/S007512/1