UK Environmental Intelligence

UK Environmental Intelligence

EA monitoring (open data, no auth), Met Office forecasts/observations (free API keys each), carbon intensity (open).

Workflows

1. Flood risk: Catchment station search (by location) → river level readings → active flood warnings → rainfall gauge readings → weather forecast for incoming rain.
2. Bathing water safety: Search bathing sites → compliance classification → sample results → upstream water quality points → beach weather forecast.
3. Environmental profile: Catchment discovery near postcode → flood warnings → groundwater levels → bathing water → water quality → ecology → carbon intensity for region.

Gotchas

• Two separate flood systems: Flood monitoring (stations + level/flow readings, 15-min updates) vs flood warnings (alerts with severity 1–4). Different providers, different data models. Use warnings for "is there risk?" and monitoring for "what are actual levels?"
• Hydrology ≠ flood monitoring: Separate EA systems with different station IDs. Hydrology uses measure notation IDs — get station first, then request readings by measure.
• Water quality determinands: Hundreds of measurement types. Search the determinand codelist first to find the right code before querying observations.
• Geographic filtering: Most EA tools take lat, long, dist (km). Met Office takes latitude, longitude. Use catchment tools as the starting point when the user gives a place name.
• Bathing water IDs: Use eubwid (EU bathing water ID), not the sampling point notation. Samples are May–September only.
• Carbon intensity regions: 14 GB regions (1–14). Omit region for national figures. Updates every 30 minutes.
• Large result sets: Use geographic filters, date ranges, and pagination. Bulk station listings return thousands of results.