7. Changes to formats and schema for our existing datasets 

Created: 31 October 2024 Updated: 25 March 2025

The formats and schema of our new and updated datasets are different to the previous versions of these datasets. If you are a regular user of these datasets, you will need to update your processes. 

‘Risk of flooding from rivers and sea’ and ‘Risk of flooding from surface water’

For detailed information on the new formats and schema of ‘Risk of flooding from rivers and the sea’ and ‘Risk of flooding from surface water’, see the related announcement ‘New formats and schema for RoFRS and RoFSW’. 

We have also changed how we present flood depth information. Our previous RoFSW Depth datasets showed the maximum depth of flooding from surface water that could result from a flood with a 0.1%, 1% and 3.3% chance of happening in any given year. Our new RoFSW Depth datasets show the annual chance of flooding beyond a specific depth, for depths at intervals from 20cm to 120cm. For example, the 20cm dataset shows a map of likelihood of flooding beyond 20cm depth within 4 likelihood bands. We have made this change in response to user feedback that demonstrates this approach is more readily comprehensible to most people. 

Flood Zones

Flood Zones 2 and 3 no longer overlap, with clear attribution between the Flood Zones. This is different to how the data used to be displayed where Flood Zone 2 included areas that were Flood Zone 3.

Coastal erosion data

We have changed how we represent the coastal erosion risk projections. We no longer show the 5^th, 50^th and 95^th percentile confidence levels. We now show a single best estimate projection for the zones at risk of coastal erosion from now up to 2055 and from now up to 2105 for the present day, Higher Central and Upper End climate change allowances.