Welcome to the UK-SCAPE hydrological sensor data integration tool
This is a prototype web tool for demonstrating the integration and visualisation of hydrological sensor data (often real-time) from diverse online sources:
- Water quality (WQ) data from the Environment Agency (EA) online Water Quality Data Archive and an August 2024 snapshot of the Natural Resources Wales (NRW) water quality data from NRW Water Quality Archive.
- River flows and levels from the UKCEH National River Flow Archive, the EA online Hydrological Data service, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) Water Level Data service
- Recent and forecast air temperatures from the Met Office DataPoint service.
The web tool enables mapping and graphing of data from these sites to assist with assessment of data availability spatially, and provides an example of the benefit of more standardised access to sensor data services. We aim to evolve this work to demonstrate use of widespread data standards to enable comparability between data from different sensor networks.
A key focus is on water quality data from the EA Water Quality Data Archive service. This service provides daily updated water quality data, mainly based on lab-analysed samples from rivers and lakes. Whilst the service has its own interface which includes maps of sampling points, it is not possible to filter to show maps of sites with data for specific determinands, or to readily understand the number of samples or summarise the results.
This tool enables water quality sites that meet specific criteria (sufficient number of values of selected determinands) to be identified across catchments, and for sites to be visualised on the map based on the long-term mean of results from a selected determinand, enabling first pass mapping of pollutant levels in rivers.
Much of the data behind this portal is available via the UK-SCAPE hydrology API, which is a first-pass at standarding the means for requesting data from UK environmental data APIs, and at formatting the data returned. This makes it far easier to integrate data from different service providers. We aim to evolve this work to demonstrate use of widespread data standards to enable comparability between data from different sensor networks.
We would love to hear how useful this tool is for you. Please send feedback or questions to: mfry@ceh.ac.uk.
This work is aiming to improve access to UK monitoring data for researchers, and was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK Status, Change and Projections of the Environment (UK-SCAPE) programme delivering National Capability.
UK-SCAPE hydrological sensor data integration tool
Water quality (WQ) map options
Please note that these queries may take quite a long time to run.
How to use
Choose a dataset from the map and click on a marker to view a graph of the available data.
For water quality data, click on a hydrometric area (HA) on the map to view sites in that area.
Use the water quality map options to view and filter the data.
The buttons 
next to each dataset name provide a list of the stations. Clicking a name will effectively click that station on the map and list the determinands available for that station. The WQ stations lists will filter when filters are applied.
Choose a determinand from the list to draw a graph of the available data measured at this site.