How do I download Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea (RoFRS) and Risk of Flooding from Surface Water (RoFSW) Data?

Created: 28 January 2025 Updated: 28 January 2025

Users can download data from the ‘Data services and download by area of interest’ section of the dataset page.  Users can define their own area of interest using the ‘Draw polygon’ tools within the user interface.

Note that data will only be available for preview if you zoom to 500m (1:50 000) on the preview map.

Due to the size and complexity of a national 2m grid square data product, you will need to raise a ‘Large Data Request’ if the area you define exceeds the limits of the automated download.  The threshold is based on the density of features requested, as opposed to total area - large area download requests are not currently possible through the download app.

‘Large Data Requests’ will be made available via a pre-prepared SFTP site: dspsftplive.blob.core.windows.net

Users who have raised a ticket will receive the username and password to access the data.  If you have any problems accessing the SFTP, please try the following troubleshooting tips:

• check that the SFTP client you are using is up to date - recommended clients are FileZilla and WinSCP

• check that you have input the correct credentials

• check you have input the correct port number - some clients e.g. FileZilla, will automatically use port 21 (FTP) for connections, so you will need to explicitly set the port to 22 (SFTP)

• check if the SFTP connection could be blocked by your corporate / restrictive firewall.

You may need to work with your IT department if you encounter any issues.

Once you have access to the SFTP site, data can be downloaded for each of the modelled Regions.  Data is not available as a national dataset, due to its size and complexity. The 9 Regions are shown below:

• Anglia

• Dee & North West

• Humber

• Isle of Wight

• Northumbria, Solway & Tweed

• Isle of Scillies

• Severn

• South West

• Thames & South East

It is strongly recommended that you only download the Region for your Area of Interest, due to the size of the data.

Currently, only File Geodatabase format is supported - provided in compressed .zip files.  For each Region, data for Risk of Flooding from Surface Water and Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea is available, along with the associated Climate Change scenario.

Each Geodatabase contains layers for the associated Feature Layers. For example, ‘RoFS_v202501.gdb’ contains:

• RoFSW_4band

• RoFSW_4band_0_2m_depth

• RoFSW_4band_0_3m_depth

• RoFSW_4band_0_6m_depth

• RoFSW_4band_0_9m_depth

• RoFSW_4band_1_2m_depth