Sub-hourly river flow data observations from 1369 river gauges in the UK, 1948-2023 (UK-Flow15)

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Environmental Information Data Centre
Last updated:
19 November 2025
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Summary

This dataset provides a coherent, quality-controlled collection of 15-minute river flow observations from across the United Kingdom. It brings together more than 1,300 gauging stations and over 50,000 station-years of data collected by the main UK measuring authorities - the Environment Agency (England), Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Natural Resources Wales, the Department for Infrastructure (Northern Ireland), and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The records span from 1948 to the present day and represent the first national-scale compilation of sub-daily flow data in a consistent format. The dataset was created by assembling raw hydrometric records from open APIs and data requests to measuring authorities, then standardising them to a uniform 15-minute time step. A structured quality control framework was applied to identify and flag potential issues such as missing or duplicated values, irregular time steps, and implausible flow events. Each record includes a detailed quality code indicating the outcome of these checks, and a suite of accompanying metadata files provides full traceability of data provenance, quality control results, and any adjustments made during processing. The resource is designed to support large-sample and national-scale hydrological research, particularly for applications requiring high-resolution data such as flood analysis, catchment response studies, and model calibration. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/211710ac-f01b-4b52-807f-373babb1c368

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Supporting information ZIP 19 November 2025 Not available
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Additional information

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Added to data.gov.uk
2025-11-13
Access contraints
If you reuse this data, you should cite: Fileni, F., Fowler, H.J., Lewis, E., Fry, M., Cooper, H., Swain, O., Coxon, G., McLay, F., Bruce, E., Yang, L., Archer, D. (2025). Sub-hourly river flow data observations from 1369 river gauges in the UK, 1948-2023 (UK-Flow15). NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/211710ac-f01b-4b52-807f-373babb1c368
Harvest GUID
211710ac-f01b-4b52-807f-373babb1c368
Extent
Latitude: 60.861° to °
Longitude: -8.648° to 1.768°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2025-10-22 (publication)
Frequency of update
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(pointOfContact, author, owner, publisher, custodian)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
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