To date, the real-time impact data that is needed to effectively forecast and monitor geological hazard events has been unavailable or incomplete. The FloodTags platform aims to fill this gap by using large language models (LLMs) to extract real-time and historic information from social media platforms (X; YouTube; Bluesky; Facebook; Instagram) and more than 150 000 online news sources. This collaboration is a step towards providing timely, ground-level insight into geological hazards around the world.

I am aware that many organisations around the world, including BGS, rely on the manual gathering of data from social media and the news during disaster events, and to update regional and national hazard inventories.Ìý This can add a significant time lag to relevant information being interpreted, particularly during natural disasters, which means any actions taken are also delayed. We have been working with FloodTags for some time now and are delighted to formalise our collaboration in this highly valuable area of research.

Catherine Pennington, BGS Engineering Geologist, landslides.

This collaboration marks a major step forward for FloodTags. Partnering with BGS brings us the scientific expertise and data to expand into landslides and other geological hazards. Their deep knowledge of earth science opens the door to new applications for our real-time media monitoring tools. Combined with the power of large language models, this collaboration allows us to jointly deliver fast and relevant disaster insights for both hydrological and geological hazards. This helps governments and emergency services in making more informed, evidence-based decisions.

Jurjen Wagemaker, founder of FloodTags.

As a first activity under the new Memorandum of Understanding, BGS and FloodTags are in Indonesia this week topresent the first version of HazTags, an LLM-powered platform for monitoring floodsand landslides using social and news media data. They will discuss long-term collaboration in Indonesia with:

• theIndonesian national research agency, BRIN
• Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG)
• Indonesian Red Cross (PMI)
• Meteorology, Climatology and GeophysicsAgency (BMKG)
• Ministry for Public Works (PU)
• National Agency for Disaster Management (BPBD)
• Research Centre for Disaster Mitigation (ITB)

For more information, please contact BGS press (bgspress@bgs.ac.uk) or call 07790 607 010.

Groundwater flooding occurs when the water table rises to meet the ground surface. This hazard often goes unnoticed because it commonly occurs alongside river and surface water flooding, but it can substantially exacerbate the effects of flooding events.
Without dramatic images of burst river banks or breached sea defences, groundwater flooding rarely makes the headlines, yet in England and Wales it is estimated that groundwater flooding accounts for on average £530 million in damage per year. This represents 30 per cent of the total national annual economic loss due to flooding (Allocca et al., 2021).

A significant contributing factor to the high costs associated with groundwater flooding is the effect on underground infrastructure, such as basements and buried assets. Generally, the water table response to rainfall is much slower than rivers. Persistent rainfall over weeks and months can raise groundwater levels to a tipping point, where even a short period of low-intensity rainfall can unexpectedly trigger a flooding event. The mechanics of groundwater flooding also result in flood water lingering for longer than other forms of flooding as the water table slowly recedes, causing an estimated 2.5 times greater damage than those incurred from other flood types (Allocca et al., 2021).

The 51ÁÔÆæ Groundwater Flooding Susceptibility dataset highlights which areas of England, Scotland and Wales are most susceptible to groundwater flooding, based on geological and hydrogeological conditions at a 50 m resolution. Models of groundwater flooding originating from both superficial and bedrock aquifers are combined creating zones of susceptibility which are classified as:

• the potential for groundwater flooding to occur at surface
• the potential for groundwater flooding of property situated below ground level (basements, etc.)
• limited potential for groundwater flooding to occur
  

A complementary dataset providing a measure of confidence in the susceptibility classification (based on the hydrogeological setting) is included, which considers the groundwater flooding mechanism, susceptibility class and locations of previous groundwater flooding. The data is recommended as a screening tool for scoping and planning rather than for site-specific risk assessments.

Feedback from existing data users demonstrates the wide-ranging applications of this data:

• desk-based scoping studies by environmental and engineering consultants
• informing local planning authorities and property developers when compiling local development plans
• informing lead local flood authorities compiling their strategic flood risk assessments
• assessing infrastructure networks and assets, such as rail lines, highways and water treatment facilities, for susceptibility to groundwater flooding
• research by conservation and academic institutes
• informing water companies of areas that may be affected by planned reductions in groundwater abstraction activities
• informing climate reports for Ministry of Defence sites  

Many home insurance providers do not provide cover for the effects of groundwater flooding and ensuring awareness of an area susceptibility to this hazard is an essential component of any property conveyancing report.

A more granular view of groundwater flood risk can be gained by combining this data with other information such as elevation, previous instances of groundwater flooding, rainfall, property type, and land drainage information. A number of 51ÁÔÆæ data resellers have used the BGS Groundwater Flooding Susceptibility dataset alongside some of our other datasets to develop their own flood modelling tools, predicting groundwater flood risk at a finer scale.

Contact

If you would like to discuss how this data can support your organisations groundwater flooding decision making please get in touch with the digital data team (digitaldata@bgs.ac.uk).

About the author

Extreme weather events are projected to become more common in the UK, costing £750 million per year (Bates et al., 2023). A new, £38 million infrastructure project will enhance the UK resilience to floods and droughts and will include open-air laboratories across the UK and a large-scale, live environmental data bank.

The project, titled ‘’ (FDRI), will provide infrastructure to allow aspects of the hydrological cycle in specific locations in England, Scotland and Wales to be tracked. The data produced can be used alongside artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technology to model present conditions and forecast the impact of extremes.

Improving our ability to analyse UK environmental data with models and AI will:

• improve the prediction of flood and drought risk
• enable the creation of better, more cost-effective infrastructure
• allow more accurate response to water supply demands

Monitoring activities will be coordinated and innovation better directed through the network that the FDRI project will create. It will also create a near real-time data bank with outdoor laboratories in three catchments: the Severn, the Chess (Thames) and the Tweed. This will be achieved by deploying instruments for observing subtle changes in the water environment, such as:

• evaporation
• soil moisture
• weather
• groundwater
• river flow

It will also provide new digital solutions to support data and help build capacity in the hydrological community through training and skills sharing.

We are delighted to be part of this landmark project, which will provide the UK with revolutionary solutions to reduce the impact of floods and droughts.

Each year, dealing with the impact of flooding and droughts costs the UK around £750 million. It is through increased resilience and advanced prediction capabilities that the nation can reduce this cost and better protect at-risk communities.

Alan MacDonald, head of BGS Groundwater.

Funding

The £38 million project has been awarded funding by the 51ÁÔÆæ/Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). NERC and the UK Centre for Hydrology & Ecology will lead the project, with contributions from BGS, Imperial College London and the University of Bristol.

Earth changing climate is increasing the number of extreme floods and droughts, causing environmental, societal and economic damage. This investment will transform the way we can forecast these events by building data and monitoring capability.

NERC is helping to respond to climate challenges with research and innovation investments that will accelerate the green economy and deliver solutions to national priorities.

Prof Louise Heathwaite, executive chair of 51ÁÔÆæ/NERC.

The project will work closely with organisations in the environmental and government sectors, including the Environment Agency, to build modelling and help prepare for severe weather.

Reference

Bates, P D, Savage, J, Wing, O, Quinn, N, Sampson, C, Neal, J, and Smith, A. 2023. . Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 23, 891–908. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-891-2023

Notes for editors

The (FCERM) research and development programme areas of interest launched at the beginning of May 2024. Following this, we are highlighting the BGS datasets that can support coastal researchers and practitioners facing adaptation challenges at the coast.

As a result of the complex interaction of natural properties and processes, a range of geohazards converge at the coast and make it a hotspot for financial and societal costs. One such example of these issues is demonstrated by the plight of Fairbourne, a village in west Wales that is . The third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) has highlighted that all four UK nations are  and the UK lacks national ‘projections of risk to the viability of coastal communities, either from erosion or catastrophic flooding’.

Existing methodologies for assessing national coastal erosion vulnerability often fail to consider how the localised properties and structures of geological deposits can affect coastal change when combined with coastal processes. For example, the (NCERM) for England and Wales states, ‘Details of geologically complex areas known as “complex cliffs” are, in general, not included within the dataset due to the inherent uncertainties associated with predicting the timing and extent of erosion at these locations.’

51ÁÔÆæ GeoCoast

51ÁÔÆæ GeoCoast aims to plug this data gap by providing a suite of nationally consistent geological properties data that can be used by stakeholders as key components within a coastal modelling environment.

51ÁÔÆæ launched GeoCoast in 2022. It is an integrated geographical information system (GIS) package of datasets designed to inform and support coastal management, planning and adaptation around Great Britain. GeoCoast is based on the outputs of numerous research programmes, stakeholder advice and data analytics and provides sufficient data for users to analyse and assess a range of coastal risks.

GeoCoast Premium

GeoCoast Premium is a licenced package that identifies coastal properties at a 50 m scale and consists of three layers:

• erosion susceptibility
• coastal properties
• groundwater flooding zones

Erosion susceptibility

The first layer provides an erosion susceptibility assessment of the coastal stratigraphy. Our regional geology experts considered the 3D geological ‘stack’ of rock types on the coasts of Great Britain, providing unique insight that is not always available from 2D geology maps.

Each rock type in the stack is scored based on a series of geological properties:

• type of discontinuities
• material strength
• permeability

A total score is calculated per rock type and a worst and mean erosion susceptibility score provided for the entire stack. Scores are also classified from ‘low’ to ‘high’, with special consideration given to the rock type at the bottom of the stack as this is most likely to interact with wave action and tidal processes.

Additional information is provided on:

• cliff profile
• complexity of the geological structure of the stack
• whether there have been any previous landslides mapped at this location

This is repeated every 50 m around the high-water line of mainland Great Britain. Projected rates of erosion calculated by the NCERM project are also provided for England and Wales.

Coastal properties grid

The coastal properties grid provides information on a wider coastal range, covering the foreshore and backshore region. Using the data to consider Fairbourne as an example, the grid provides a condensed version of the erosion susceptibility assessment.

Projected coastal inundation extents consider sea level projections from UK Climate Projection (UKCP) 18 under the RCP 4.5 emissions scenario. These projections offer a worst case, undefended view of coastal inundation and therefore do not account for any engineered defences.

The susceptibility of the underlying geology and observed ground motion data have been used to calculate subsidence rates for the entire foreshore and backshore area. It is also available as a potential percentage volume reduction.

The coastal zone has been classified by coastal type.

Groundwater flooding zones

The third component of GeoCoast Premium is the groundwater flooding zone. This layer allows for coastal inundation and groundwater flooding to be considered in tandem as groundwater flooding can exacerbate and prolong coastal flood events and have a particular impact on buried assets such as utilities and foundations. In this layer, a current view of coastal inundation susceptibility is considered rather than a projected view.  

This data highlights some 133 km² of coastline classed as ‘high susceptibility to erosion’ with a further 195 km² in the ‘moderate to high susceptibility’ class. Even if defences are maintained, this is a staggering amount of coastline under threat and there are some 30 000 properties within 25 m of potentially highly susceptible coast. Counties such as Lincolnshire, Hampshire, Norfolk and Lancashire are particularly affected.

GeoCoast Open

GeoCoast Open data is freely available on the and for download. This package provides a range of historic images and diagrams extracted from our archives, memoirs and other publications that can provide a reference for coastal change. It also contains a detailed suite of statistical data based on the GeoCoast Premium datasets. These include, for example, percentage of a shoreline management plan area or local authority coastline at threat from inundation and percentage of coastline with high susceptibility to erosion. In addition, there is a tool to compare or share best practice at a regional scale and streamline the consideration of multiple underlying datasets through a simple, high-level scheme, presented as domains.

A series of are available for seven coastlines of natural importance demonstrating the attribution and application of the datasets. For more information, please visit the 51ÁÔÆæ GeoCoast web pages or do not hesitate to get in touch (digitaldata@bgs.ac.uk).

Badgers and other burrowing animals can weaken the structural integrity of flood defences. New devices being trialled by BGS use electrical resistivity to detect and map burrows in order to help find solutions.

The UK has over 7500 km of embankments along its rivers and streams, protecting the communities and infrastructure behind them.ÌýBut these vital flood defences can be weakened when burrowing animals like badgers, rabbits and now beavers move in and weaken their structural integrity. When that happens, embankments are more likely to fail during a flood and leave the locations they protect vulnerable to flooding.Ìý

Using electrical resistance to detect burrows

Until now, regulators and landowners have had no way to know where the badger burrows go underground or if the burrows have caused significant damage to the flood embankment.

Adrian White, a geophysicist from BGS, and his colleagues trialled a new technique on an embankment on the River Ouse, North Yorkshire, which protects Cawood, a village of 1500 people, from flooding. 

There have been several cases where badgers and other animals have caused embankments to fail, and it can happen very quickly if the burrows are in critical areas of the embankment.

Badgers are a protected species, so once they’ve been spotted at an embankment it can take months to deal with the problem. The burrows must be found, the badgers moved on, and then the site has to be repaired. And there always the risk they could move 100 m down the road and find a new embankment to burrow into.

The whole process takes months, is expensive and labour intensive, but we only find out if the burrows have damaged the embankment once the repair work starts.

Adrian White, BGS Geophysicist.

Advantage for clay embankments 

Currently, ground penetrating radar (GPR) is used by scientists and consultants to map underground voids.

We trialled electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) on the embankment. Similar to GPR it not invasive; we just insert electrodes into the ground that reach about 10 cm into the soil.

ERT works by passing an electrical current between the electrodes inserted into the ground and measuring the voltage difference between other electrodes. It’s a widely used technique and is already used to map subsurface geology and identify archaeological structures. The system allows the scientists to map the electrical resistance of the soil and, as the burrows are filled with air, which is very electrically resistive, they show up as resistive anomalies in ERT surveys.

The ERT could detect badger burrows up to 1.5 m deep in the clay and map the structure of the badger sett, which had multiple entrances. It clearly outperformed the GPR, which doesn’t work very well on clay-rich ground, because the clay absorbs the radar waves.

This is great news for the agencies and managers in charge of monitoring and repairing flood embankments: it can quickly assess stability, reduce repair costs and minimise the likelihood of unexpected failures during flood events.

And, critically, it doesn’t disturb the animals.

Adrian White.

The UK flood embankment inventory 

The UK has built flood embankments for hundreds of years and they play a critical role in our flood defences in both rural and urban areas. In England and Wales, the Environment Agency maintains most, but landowners and farmers maintain some informal embankments.Ìý

Burrowing by animals like badgers rapidly change how well an embankment can hold a flood back. One day there can be nothing and the next, a whole load of tunnels. It a huge challenge and we must find better ways to mitigate the impact of our wildlife on what will be the last line of defence for some communities.

Recently, beavers have started to recolonise UK rivers, and it is hoped they will help reduce flooding. What is less well-known is that they are excellent burrowers. These burrows start below the water, so may undermine flood defences without us knowing they are there. We’ll need new techniques to find and map those too.

Adrian White.

More information

Natural flood management (NFM) has become a key aspect of UK policy to reduce the risk of flooding, a hazard that is expected to increase under future climate-change scenarios.

What is natural flood management?

NFM seeks to control flooding by reducing or slowing the flow in river catchments using natural approaches. These include measures such as:

• planting trees to enhance infiltration and catchment roughness
• installing leaky wooden barriers within streams to create temporary surface water storage
• re-meandering rivers to reconnect them to their flood plains

Current understanding of natural flood management

There is growing pressure to change the way landscapes are managed at large spatial scales to respond to the climate and biodiversity crises. Despite its newfound popularity in UK policy, there are still uncertainties about the effectiveness of NFM at . This is particularly true for measures that are dispersed across catchments, such as land-use change through afforestation or improvements to soil quality.  Understanding how water is stored and released within catchments is vital for predicting the effects of these changes on both floods and droughts, as well as a host of other co-benefits such as biodiversity and agricultural productivity.

Recent work by Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh, BGS and the University of Dundee has started to look at these questions at the internationally important at the in the Scottish Borders.

Why is more research needed?

The infiltration of water into the subsurface is a key area of research in NFM including:

• how water infiltrates different soils
• the effect of different soil properties on infiltration rates
• the

In addition to understanding how easily water infiltrates, we also need to know how much water can infiltrate and where it goes — in other words, how much water can be stored? There has been much less research on quantifying catchment storage and the role of deeper catchment storage in the context of NFM, despite its potentially .

The effects of soils and geology on catchment storage

Using multiple methods, including water-level monitoring and stable isotopic tracers, our research estimated water storage across nine subcatchments and correlated the findings with catchment properties such as soil type, land cover and geology. We found that in controlling catchment water storage, suggesting that the effects of changing forest cover are masked by more dominant soil and geological properties.

There are, of course, caveats to the work: we only looked at existing, mature conifer forests and only considered the effect of trees on storage. The impacts of trees on surface roughness and broadleaved trees, which are the main type planted by this and many other NFM projects, were not considered. While the differences are probably minimal, these questions need to be tested through further research. Our findings are, however, consistent with other work looking at and in Eddleston and .

Implications for natural flood management

These findings have two significant implications for NFM. The first is to add further criteria for determining the planting of the ‘right trees in the right place’. This storage perspective suggests that tree planting needs to be targeted at areas where potential storage is high but infiltration rates are low, such as highly compacted or degraded soils in relatively permeable catchments. The second is the need to understand dominant catchment controls on runoff in any NFM scheme, which means getting better knowledge of hydrological processes within catchments and their representation within models. We are exploring this second implication in a follow-up study combining stream flow data and water tracer data into a hydrological model, to see if this improves model outputs and therefore understanding of land use change in the catchment.

There is growing pressure to change the way landscapes are managed at large spatial scales to respond to the climate and biodiversity crises. Gaining a better understanding of catchment water storage across different environments is likely to be vital for predicting the multiple benefits and risks of nature-based solutions such as NFM. Future research using both empirical and modelling approaches needs to incorporate these perspectives to underpin effective future management strategies.

About the authors

Leo Peskett

Assistant professor in physical geography

Heriot-Watt University

Leo’s work focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of nature-based solutions in the land and water sectors and engaging with policymakers at international to local levels to bridge research and policy. His recent research has concentrated on:

• the integration of land and water management in the UK
• the impacts of land use on runoff in a natural flood management context
• the use of the natural capital approach in environmental management

Prior to academia, Leo spent a decade heavily involved in the development of global policies to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation (REDD+) and related climate change policies, working with the Overseas Development Institute, UN agencies and governments in the global North and South.

When considering natural hazards in a riverine or catchment setting, it is often high-magnitude flood events that grab the headlines.ÌýIn comparison, associated catchment hazards such as river scour are often overlooked, but these events can be no less costly in their societal and economic impacts.ÌýRecent studies have shown that, in the UK, river erosion and associated impacts exacerbate flood damage by £336million a year and are a considerable source of water pollutants, costing £238million a year to remediate.River erosion further increases the costs of water treatment and maintenance of drainage networks by £132million a year and accounts for 25percent of validsubsidence insurance claims (Li et al., 2021; Pritchard et al., 2013).

Infrastructure damage

Scour causes physical modification to riverbeds and banks via the removal of sediment or engineered materials. It occurs when the forces imposed by the flow of water on a sediment particle exceed the stabilising forces (Kirby et al., 2015).  This is an environmental process occurring in response to the natural variability of river stream flows and sediment regimes but, unlike hazards associated with flood waters that will eventually recede, the changes that result from river erosion can be permanent.This makes river scour extremely damaging when it intersects assets such as farmland, infrastructure, residences, historic sites, etc.

Of particular concern is the significant damage river scour can cause to infrastructure adjacent to rivers, such as bridges, flood defences and electricity pylons. The Climate Change Committee recent, independent assessment of UK climate risk has highlighted that the risk to bridges and pipelines from future erosion requires further investigation.

Currently, river scour risk to UK railway bridges is estimated to cause the loss of 8.2 million passenger journeys each year, with an accompanying economic cost of up to £60 million (Lamb et al., 2019). In 2009, flood events in Cumbria caused a tragic fatality and the partial or total destruction of 20 road bridges, costing the local economy an estimated £2 million per week during the recovery period (Pizarro et al., 2020).

Events such as these serve as a stark and increasingly frequent reminder of the destructive effects of river scour. As a result, the ability to predict where river scour is likely to occur across the UK river network is being recognised as increasingly important, both under current conditions and future climate change scenarios. The UK Government Environment Act (2021) has a target to reduce the impact of physical modification on the water environment and, between 2009 and 2015, £68 million was spent towards reaching this goal (UK Government, 2021).

Maintaining catchment health

Management and mitigation against river erosion is required at multiple scales and concerns a variety of stakeholders. Organisations involved in the maintenance of catchment health include:

• river basin and catchment management authorities
• charities such as the National Trust and various river trusts
• environmental protection agencies
• national park authorities

At a more granular level, the occurrence of river erosion is of interest to asset owners responsible for infrastructure, such as rail or road networks, local planning authorities and insurers, and lenders and property search companies when considering risks to assets, future developments and portfolios.

Efforts to model this costly geohazard have highlighted an important gap in available datasets. The joint efforts of the Environment Agency (EA), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Natural Resource Wales (NRW) on the ‘’ flagged: ‘There is currently no nationwide information showing where erosion or deposition is likely to occur’, whilst a UK Climate Resilience Programme (UKCRP)-funded project, ‘’, found: ‘Creating resilient, sustainable infrastructure depends on understanding the potential future risks of changing erosion hazards and their impact. Yet at present, no predictive modelling framework exists for erosion hazard.’

The role of geological data

The geological properties of bedrock and superficial deposits that make up riverbeds and banks are fundamental controls on the susceptibility of any given river reach to scouring. As such, geological data is a key input into any predictive models attempting to resolve this issue and is an invaluable resource for infrastructure risk and catchment health assessments at both catchment and reach scales.

Existing modelling efforts by the UK environmental protection agencies and the wider scientific community utilise various BGS data holdings. For example, the UKCRP project derives sediment compositions from the BGS soils texture maps, whilst Defra, EA and NRW are considering the use of BGS superficial deposits data as indication of the location of erodible deposits. Both have limitations: the latter project fails to consider erodible or soluble bedrock deposits and the former acknowledges that it lacks ‘sufficient information on the spatial variation in these [sediment] compositions’. This emphasises the need for consistent information on the erodibility of riverbed and bank material at national and granular levels.

Stay tuned for our upcoming blog to find out how 51ÁÔÆæ updated GeoScour data product can provide geological river scour assessments from catchment down to individual reach scale with national coverage.

Join the BGS GeoScour dataset webinar: 8 September 2022

51ÁÔÆæ Product Development invites you to the launch of our newly updated dataset, GeoScour. Our 30-minute webinar will give an overview of river scour and its associated river erosion hazards, including surface geology susceptibility and bedrock geology susceptibility, and will be followed by an introduction to the Open and Premium GeoScour data packages.

About the author

51ÁÔÆæ GeoScour Open datasets provide a generalised overview of the natural characteristics and properties of catchment and riverine environments for the assessment of river scour in Great Britain.

We’ve brought together research experts and product development experts to provide an introductory overview of our two new datasets, which comprise of two different tiers of geographical information system (GIS) data containing seven different data layers. Each tier represents a different scale of assessment, from high-level catchment to subcatchment data.

Our 30-minute webinar provides an overview of river scour and its associated river erosion hazards, including surface geology susceptibility and bedrock geology susceptibility, and will be followed by an introduction to the Open and Premium GeoScour data packages.