§ 36. Dr. John PughTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to improve the collation of flood return statistics [81242]
§ Mr. MorleyThe Environment Agency has established and implemented systems and procedures in all of its regions and areas covering England and Wales 289W for the collection of flood event data during and after flooding. Flood and hydrometric data is collected from instrumentation (rain gauges, river level and flow recorders, tide gauges, wave buoys) and by using techniques such as aerial/remote sensing, land survey, on-site monitoring and post-event questionnaires
A project led by the Environment Agency (funded by DEFRA) in collaboration with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Rivers Agency of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Northern Ireland, is being carried out to improve the capture and archiving of flood flows at river gauging stations in the UK. Known as "HIFLOWS-UK", the main aim of the project is to extend and improve the data available for flood estimation primarily using Flood Estimation Handbook methods, and to develop a single authoritative UK dataset. The project also aims to make the data widely available and easily accessible via the Internet, and to establish structures and procedures for future updating and dissemination. The project is due to complete in March 2004
Work started in 2002 to improve accessibility to sea level data. Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) who manage the UK Tide Gauge Network for DEFRA and the Scottish Executive are being given extra funding from DEFRA to collate a new data base of tide data over the last 30 years and make it available on CD. In addition recent historic data from the network is now freely available from the POL web site. In September 2002 DEFRA installed the first of two of a network of six near-shore wave recording gauges which, together with data from existing offshore wave gauges run by the Met Office, will be collated to form the first long term archive of wave data for England and Wales. Data from the archive will be freely available on the CEFAS web site who are managing the network for DEFRA
In the South-East of England a new £8.2 million pilot project has been established by the Agency in partnership with all the maritime authorities (via the coastal groups) for the strategic regional coastal monitoring of the shoreline form and coastal processes (including wind, waves and tides). This project has been supported and grant-aided by DEFRA, and similar projects are likely to be established in other regions of England and Wales
In all cases, collating date and making it freely available facilitates the user community who undertake statistical analysis including flood frequency analysis for many purposes.