Environmental risk visualisation · Applied meteorology

Visualising rainfall, river and tidal flood risk

Integrated rainfall, river-level and tidal observations into maps and linked time series for exploring potential flood risk.

Team course project · Imperial College London2024

Geospatial views developed to compare rainfall intensity with flood-related indicators across England, with the Bristol–Cardiff region highlighted for closer inspection.

3linked data types

15 minrainfall intervals

UKmapping domain

Teamcourse project

01 / Question

Why this problem mattered

Flood risk is produced by interacting weather and hydrological conditions rather than rainfall alone. The project explored how rainfall observations could be viewed alongside river and tidal levels, then translated into spatial displays that help users identify potentially important locations and investigate changing conditions.

02 / Approach

From physical fields to usable evidence

Integrated rainfall observations with river-level and tidal records, including data obtained through the Environment Agency API.
Compared hydro-meteorological behaviour on typical and wet days to make temporal relationships between rainfall, river response and tidal state visible.
Built interactive geospatial views that encoded rainfall intensity and flood-related indicators by location, supporting regional exploration and visual comparison.

03 / Result

The clearest outcome was a visual workflow linking weather inputs with place-based risk information.

The project produced mapped rainfall and flood-related indicators across England, alongside time-series comparisons of rainfall, river and tidal conditions. These views demonstrated how environmental observations from different sources could be assembled into a more legible risk-exploration tool, with both national context and regional detail.

Time-series comparisons of rainfall, river and tidal levels on a typical day and a wet day — Typical-day and wet-day comparisons show how 15-minute rainfall, river levels and tidal levels can be read together rather than as isolated measurements.

Interactive rainfall map of England and Wales with station markers and a detailed regional radar layer — An interactive map prototype combined station observations with a more detailed rainfall layer, allowing users to move from national context to regional inspection.

Implications

The work is strongest as an environmental-data visualisation case study. It shows how meteorological and hydrological observations can be organised around an applied risk question, and how maps and linked time series can communicate spatial and temporal patterns more effectively than disconnected tables or model outputs.

Limitations

This was a team course project, and some proposed classification, regression and live-forecast components were incomplete or insufficiently validated. The maps should therefore be read as exploratory risk visualisations—not as an operational flood-warning system or a verified predictive model. Data completeness, station coverage and inconsistent tidal metadata also limited interpretation.