Vesuviano et al. (2026) Paired rainfall and high-flow event timeseries, statistics, and extraction method for 1203 stations and catchments in Great Britain recorded during 1990-2016 [UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite]

Identification

• Journal: Open MIND
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-04-08
• Authors: Gianni Vesuviano, M. Fry, O. Swain, H. Cooper, Felipe Fileni, Amulya Chevuturi, Doran Khamis
• DOI: 10.5285/663b9078-ff16-48b2-a3d0-a87f98d1143f

Research Groups

• UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
• Newcastle University

Short Summary

This paper introduces the UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite, a comprehensive dataset and extraction method for paired rainfall and high-flow events, along with derived statistics, for 1203 stations in Great Britain from 1990-2016. It provides a standardized procedure and a large-scale dataset to support hydrological research.

Objective

• To develop and provide a robust procedure for identifying and extracting paired rainfall-high-flow events from time-series data, and to generate a comprehensive dataset of these events and associated statistics for Great Britain.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Great Britain, covering 1203 river gauging stations and their upstream catchments. Spatial resolution is 1000 metres (1 km) for rainfall data. Spatial reference system: OSGB 1936 / British National Grid.
• Temporal Scale: 1990-01-01 to 2016-12-31 (27 years). Temporal resolution is 15 minutes for flow data and 1 hour for rainfall data.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: A custom R-based procedure (UKCEH-FEDS event extraction method) to identify and extract paired rainfall-high-flow events. This procedure utilizes functions from the raster and stats packages in R for data processing and incorporates Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) catchment descriptors to estimate event timing.
• Data sources:
  • Rainfall: Gridded CEH-GEAR1hr v2 (1 km spatial resolution, 1-hour temporal resolution), transformed to catchment-average values using National River Flow Archive (NRFA) catchment boundaries.
  • River Flow: UK-Flow15 (15-minute temporal resolution) from Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru, Department for Infrastructure, and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
  • Catchment Descriptors: Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) catchment descriptors, extracted via the NRFA API using the rnrfa package in R.

Main Results

• Development of the UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite (UKCEH-FEDS), comprising an event extraction procedure, a dataset, and a database of statistics.
• The dataset contains 174,450 paired rainfall-high-flow events identified across 1203 river gauging stations and their upstream catchments in Great Britain.
• A database of 63 rainfall statistics and runoff signatures derived from these events is provided.
• The data covers the period from 1990 to 2016.

Contributions

• Provides a novel, standardized, and open-access methodology for identifying and extracting paired rainfall-high-flow events from hydrological time-series.
• Delivers a large-scale, quality-controlled dataset of 174,450 paired events and 63 derived statistics for Great Britain, which is crucial for flood research, model calibration, and hydrological analysis.
• Integrates multiple open-access data sources (rainfall, flow, catchment descriptors) into a coherent and usable flood event suite.

Funding

• Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/X019063/1
• Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/S007512/1

Citation

@article{Vesuviano2026Paired,
  author = {Vesuviano, Gianni and Fry, M. and Swain, O. and Cooper, H. and Fileni, Felipe and Chevuturi, Amulya and Khamis, Doran},
  title = {Paired rainfall and high-flow event timeseries, statistics, and extraction method for 1203 stations and catchments in Great Britain recorded during 1990-2016 [UKCEH Flood Event Data Suite]},
  journal = {Open MIND},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.5285/663b9078-ff16-48b2-a3d0-a87f98d1143f},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5285/663b9078-ff16-48b2-a3d0-a87f98d1143f}
}