Welcome to SurgeWatch – Video by Ivan Haigh

Dr Ivan Haigh is a lecturer in coastal oceanography at the University of Southampton. He works at Ocean and Earth Science, based at the prestigious National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. In this video he explains what SurgeWatch is.

SurgeWatch is a systematic UK-wide record of high sea level and coastal flood events over the last 100 years (1915 – 2014). It has been compiled by a team of scientists at the University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre and the British Oceanographic Data Centre. At present in contains 96 large storm events. For each event, SurgeWatch contains information on: (1) the storm that generated that event; (2) the high water levels recorded around the UK during the event; and (3) the occurrence and severity of coastal flooding as a consequence of the event.

SurgeWatch was designed to make information easily accessible, and freely available to wide range of users. On this users can easily examine: all coastal flooding events; a single event (e.g. ); or all events at a particular site through a google map search for a location or postcode. All data can be downloaded, and we hope it will also be of use for research, industry, and government.