The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is distributing, under licence, initial copies of this map to organisations, including the Scottish Executive, local authorities and emergency services. The map gives an indication of the areas in Scotland potentially at risk of flooding from either rivers or the sea, or both.
The map has been developed to provide a national picture of flood risk to be used as a strategic flood management tool, to help planning authorities and others, to identify where further consideration of flood risk may or may not be needed for proposed development, and to raise public awareness. It supports Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) 7 Planning and Flooding. This information will also be made available for the public to view via the SEPA website, from 1 November 2006.
The information relating to flood risk from rivers has been created using sophisticated modelling techniques to estimate, and route, flood volumes of river water across a representation of Scotland's landscape. The information relating to the flood risk from the sea was created by projecting estimated extreme sea levels onto the approximation of Scotland's coastal landscape. Both these techniques then provide an indication of where flooding is likely to occur.
The development of improved flood risk information for Scotland was made possible by the production (by Intermap) of a digital terrain model (DTM) of the whole of Scotland. The DTM provides a more accurate representation of the physical geography (or landscape) of Scotland than has been previously available. Intermap developed a DTM for Wales and England earlier than for Scotland, and so the Environment Agency has already been able to develop and publish its flood map.
Dr. Chris Fuller, SEPA project manager said: "The Indicative River and Coastal Flood Map (Scotland) provides an indication of the areas of Scotland estimated to be at risk of flooding. The map can be used to inform planning considerations and generally
raise awareness of flooding probabilities, therefore helping people to be more prepared for flooding. This is an important milestone in the project, and we will now focus on the technical work required to make the maps available for the public to view via SEPA web pages."
