Microproduct Data GuideBeginner

Environment Agency Flood Warnings

Current Environment Agency flood alerts and warnings for England for mapping affected flood areas and monitoring official severity changes.

Start the Guide Open Official Source Open in Colab
Report a Problem

At a Glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Tiny · ≤0.01 GB
Formats
JSON
Access
API
API Key
Not Required
Provider
Environment Agency
Updates
Near Real Time
Last Verified
Sep 28, 2026
Source Type
Government Source
Data Terms
Open Government Licence v3.0 with Environment Agency attribution.
  • Python Syntax Checked
  • Runnable Notebook

From Source to Product Signal

Test a Product Idea in Four Steps

The Environment Agency's flood API lists current official alerts and warnings, refreshed about every fifteen minutes. Start with five records from one response and preserve severity and flood-area identifiers. Warning geography is not equivalent to a nearby gauge measurement.

1

Check the Setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • An internet connection
  • The requests Python package
2

Access the Data

  1. 1.Read the official API reference and Open Government Licence attribution.
  2. 2.Fetch the current flood-warning list once.
  3. 3.Inspect severity and flood-area IDs before mapping warnings.
Open Official Source
3

Run the Python Example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install requests

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-monitoring/id/floods",
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
for warning in response.json()["items"][:5]:
    print(warning["floodAreaID"], warning["severity"],
          warning.get("timeMessageChanged"))
4

Test a Useful Signal

Inspect Current Flood Severities

Check whether current warnings support a region-specific alert card.

  1. 01Keep flood-area identifiers, warning IDs, severity, and change times.
  2. 02Distinguish current warnings from withdrawn warnings and river readings.
  3. 03Explain why an empty feed does not establish safety outside a reviewed flood area.

Related Datasets

Dataset Details

Environment Agency is a government source. Last verified 2026-09-28. Temporal coverage: current official flood alerts and warnings.

Geography

England

Formats

JSON

Provider

Environment Agency

Data Terms

Open Government Licence v3.0 with Environment Agency attribution.

Send Feedback