About us

The Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) is a working partnership between the Environment Agency and Met Office.

What we do

The Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) is a dedicated team in one national centre based in the Met Office headquarters in Exeter. From here, we:

  • provide services (including data, forecasts and information) - these support the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Category 1 and 2 responders plan for flood response in England and Wales

  • enhance and improve our services through a development programme which brings the science and research of our partner organisations into use

  • undertake user engagement and research - this allows us to understand their priorities and how satisfied they are

We forecast for all natural forms of flooding. These include flooding from:

  • rivers
  • surface water
  • groundwater
  • the sea

You can find out more about the FFC in our video an introduction to the Flood Forecasting Centre (opens in Vimeo).

Our services

The Flood Forecasting Centre produces:

  • a daily Flood Guidance Statement (FGS) for the responder community which provides a summary of flood risk for the next 5 days - the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales work with us to produce the FGS

  • a public 5-day forecast, available via the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales

  • a Flood Outlook service which provides flood likelihood guidance for the coming month in England and Wales - it is issued twice a month

  • an Application Programming Interface (API) available for developers

  • specialist hydrometeorological services for the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales

The Environment Agency in responsible for issuing flood alerts and warnings in England.

Natural Resources Wales is responsible for issuing flood alerts and warnings in Wales.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is responsible for issuing flood alerts and warnings in Scotland.

The Met Office is responsible for issuing weather warnings for the UK.

Development programme

As well as our services, the FFC works to improve the national capability in flood forecasting.

We do this by bringing new science and forecasting techniques into operational use.

Recent improvements have led to us being able to:

  • forecast floods further into the future
  • provide more accurate, targeted information

Developments that we have made with our partners to improve our flood forecasting ability include introduction of:

  • the Grid-to-Grid (G2G) model, a national system for forecasting river flooding

  • the Surface Water Flooding Hazard Impact Model which uses rainfall forecasts and existing mapping to assess the risk of surface water flooding at a county scale in England as Wales

  • Coastal Decider which has enabled better assessment coastal flooding using weather science developed at the Met Office

  • improvements to groundwater forecast modelling - this has been possible through better use of weather forecasts and historical and real time data

For more information on the development programme contact FFCenquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk

User research and engagement

We are continually developing our services to ensure they meet our customers’ needs. We do this by:

  • measuring our performance through a formal survey every 2 years

  • undertaking specific research around issues we what to know more about

  • having regular contact with our customers through our User Group and other channels

In the 2019 Responder Survey showed that:

  • over 9 out of 10 (92%) of responders were satisfied with the daily Flood Guidance Statement
  • almost half (47%) being very satisfied

Corporate information

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