Floodline in Scotland is operated by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). It provides live flooding information and advice on how to prepare for or cope with the impacts of flooding 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Our telephone service and website can be accessed by everyone, but by registering with us you can receive free flood messages for your area of interest direct to your phone.

Floodline provides live information and advice so you can take action to protect and prepare yourself and your home in advance of flooding, reducing its damage and disruption on your life.

Even if your property is not at risk of flooding, local roads and transport networks could be affected, restricting your ability to get to work, schools or essential facilities.

You can sign up for free and it only takes a few minutes.

A Flood Alert is an early indication of potential flooding from rivers, the sea and surface water. It is issued for larger geographical areas – usually the boundaries of local authorities.

If a Flood Alert is issued for your area, you should remain alert and vigilant and make early preparations for potential flooding.

Flood Warnings advise that flooding is imminent. Immediate action is required – take measures to protect yourself and your property.

Our flood monitoring scheme issues targeted Flood Warnings for properties located in affected areas if the residents are signed up. The inclusion of any property within a Flood Warning Area does not specifically imply that the individual property is at risk of flooding, but helps to identify the area at risk.

When you register, Floodline will check your address to see if you can receive Flood Warnings for your local area. Even if your property is not within a Flood Warning Area, you will automatically be registered for Flood Alerts.

Yes – as long as you know the postcode for any additional property, you can add it to your account and receive messages relevant to each and every property.

Yes – if you have the postcode for the area, we can check to see what service is available in that area.

You can add several contact numbers to your account when you sign up to the Floodline service, prioritising them in order of importance.

We recommend nominating your most likely point of contact – which may be your mobile, work or home telephone – as your ‘Priority 1’ number. This is the number that the service will contact in the first instance in the event of flooding messages being issued.

If you do not answer the phone or the messages cannot be delivered, the system will try your choice of additional numbers in order of priority, up to a maximum of three times. An answering phone service will be treated as a delivered message.

Due to the nature of flood alerts and flood warnings, messages are only useful if they can be received and read quickly. With emails we cannot guarantee that they have been received and read so delivering our messages through phone and text message provides more certainty that they will be received in a timely manner.

Call Floodline on 0345 988 1188. If you call from your registered telephone number, you should be taken directly to the detailed information for your area.

If calling from an unregistered phone, simply enter your quick dial code or codes to access the specific information for your area.

Alternatively, you can view our live flood updates online or visit our mobile website

You can find out your quick dial code or codes online or by calling Floodline on 0345 988 1188.

The cost of calling Floodline varies depending on your service provider, your call package and whether a landline or mobile is used. All public bodies are encouraged to use 03 numbers, which are charged at the same rate as calls to 01 and 02 geographical numbers and must be included within free call bundles in phone packages.

SEPA works in partnership with the Met Office through the Scottish Flood Forecasting Service to generate data 24 hours a day. This helps us to predict the likelihood and timing of river, coastal and surface water flooding.

Flooding occurs most commonly from heavy rainfall. When the ground is saturated, water runs off the land and into water courses which increase a river's flow and level. When a river can’t cope with more water, flooding happens.

Flooding also happens along our coastlines when there are storm surges associated with a high tide coinciding with higher than normal river levels or from surface water.

We can’t predict flooding from drains and sewers. However, we have produced a national surface water flood map to help you identify if your area is at risk from the combination of flooding from rainfall and overwhelmed drainage systems.

Our flood maps don’t show individual properties, but they can tell you if your area is at risk of flooding.

If you live or travel through an area at risk of flooding, you can be impacted by flooding such as closed roads, school closures or disruption to community services.

Your local council is responsible for the construction and maintenance of any flood defences in your area. If you would like to know what flood defences there are in your local area, contact your local authority directly.

More information on the responsibilities of each organisations is available of the responsibilities for flooding page.

The Scottish Flood Forum provides information on flood protection products.

The Scottish Flood Forum (SFF) advises that traditional sandbags have many limitations:

• They may not hold back water unless a waterproof sheet is placed under them.
• They can be expensive, heavy, difficult to transport and labour intensive to assemble into flood defence barriers.
• They are prone to leakage, rot very quickly after use and contain viral and bacterial infections often present in flood water.
• They require proper environmental disposal.

Alternative products, such as barriers, often provide more effective long term protection, are more easily deployed and have greater reliability when fitted correctly. You can find information on flood protection products here

Please note that some insurers may require flood defence products to be industry-approved and certified.

Visit Floodline or phone 0345 988 1188 to get advice on how to be prepare for or deal with flooding.

The Scottish Flood Forum also offers independent advice to communities who have been affected from flooding.

Unfortunately SEPA is currently unable to support the development of bespoke data licences for academic use during this financial year (2019/20). This is a short term position pending the licensing of data directly to Edina which will therefore increase the availability of SEPA data to our academic audience in the future.

Our flood maps show you areas that may be affected by flooding from rivers, the sea and surface water now and in the future due to climate change. They are designed to help you understand if you could be affected by flooding and the potential impacts. The information shown in the flood maps is indicative. The flood maps can be viewed online or downloaded from our website.

We currently have two flood map viewers available:

For members of the public, planning applicants & emergency responders: To find information on flood risk to an area and view the flood hazard/extent and future flood maps, visit check your flood risk. These maps will be helpful to anyone who is interested in understanding the flood risk for an area. You can search by using a postcode or by using the map viewer controls.

For Flood Risk Management professionals: For more technical information to inform Flood Risk Management Planning, please view our flood risk management maps.

The flood maps are now available as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) datasets under Open Government Licence (OGL) and are available for anyone to use and download from SEPA’s Data Publication webpage.

No, the flood maps only show the risk of flooding in any given year. To find out if flooding is happening just now, check our live flood updates.

Flood risk means the chance that an area may be affected by flooding in any given year. The higher the risk, the greater the chance of flooding in any given year.

There are some simple steps you can take to help reduce the impacts of flooding on you and your family. Visit the Floodline website for short animations and useful checklists to help you prepare for flooding.

Signing up to Floodline will also ensure you receive up to date information about where and when flooding may happen. View the Floodline Privacy Notice.

Remember that the actual risk of flooding to your property has not changed just because it is included on the map. Not every property in the highlighted areas is at risk of flooding but being prepared means reducing the impact flooding can have on your life.

If your property is in an area that has a likelihood of flooding, you may be at risk from a range of impacts, from property flooding or vehicle flooding to flooded access routes or disruption to community services. 

Being in a flood risk area does NOT mean that your property will be impacted if there is flooding.  The impact across the area can vary depending on land surfaces, the built environment and community or property flood defences. 

If you identify that your property is in an area of flood risk it means you should be prepared as you could be impacted in some way, now or in the future.

• High likelihood means areas with at least 10% chance of flooding each year;
• Medium likelihood means areas with at least 0.5% chance of flooding each year;
• Low likelihood means areas with at least 0.1% chance of flooding each year;

Flooding has the same chance of happening in any year, with smaller floods happening more often than bigger floods.

More information is shown in the legend of the flood maps, below the layer list in the Flood Map Data bar. 

Not necessarily. The information tells you the chance of flooding in any given year. Floods that happen less often can be more damaging over a wider area than those that happen more often. Having a low flood risk does not mean that an area will not flood or that the flooding may not sometimes be severe.

No. If the flood maps do not show any risk of flooding for your site, this does not confirm there is no risk.

The nature of the maps means that they do not always represent flooding in detail locally. They are also based on our best understanding of long-term flood risk at the time of being made. Our understanding improves over time as more data becomes available and more floods happen. You can find out how we are continually working to develop and improve our knowledge of flooding in this section of our website.

There is inherent uncertainty in all forms of flood map as they seek to replicate highly complex real-world events. As a result, there are a number of reasons why the flood maps may underestimate flood risk in a location. The following are some examples, but this list is not exhaustive:

• The source of risk is not included in the flood map model - includes some small watercourses, sewer systems in some areas, the effects of wave action in most locations,
• Small features on the ground are not picked up by the strategic nature of the maps, but influence flood routes and flow. This could include small embankments, structures, walls, or features that act as flow routes like paths.
• There is a nearby culvert or bridge that restricts the flow of water in the channel or floodplain, causing water to back up behind it. This could be because it is smaller than the natural flow area or it is prone to blockage.
• In rivers, flood flows could be higher than we expected. Flow estimates of future floods are generally based on data of what has happened in the past. If no large floods happened in the past, we might not expect them to happen in future, but we may be wrong.
• At the coast, sea levels could be higher than we expect due to local conditions influencing storm surge and/or wave impacts, or the national model of coastal flood levels might not represent local features like estuaries well.
• In estuaries, the combined effect of the sea and high river levels is not investigated for the flood maps.

The flood maps have, until 2021, been recommended for use at the strategic scale only. We think it is increasingly important to be more transparent about the information we hold and make it more widely available to even better support people and communities to understand their risk of flooding. As part of this drive and, for the first time, we are enabling the flood maps to be viewed at the site scale to help everyone avoid flood risk at the earliest stage of the planning process and identify where further investigation is required.

SEPA has assessed flood risk to areas within Scotland, not the flood risk to individual properties. When visiting our flood maps, visibility of flood risk areas at lower zoom levels makes it easier for flood map users to identify whether their site/property sits within an area that is at risk of flooding. In changing the map zoom scale, it is important to remember that the risk of flooding has not changed. You can simply zoom in further than before.

SEPA has improved the detail of the flood maps in many areas and will continue to do so in a planned way.

Provide as much information as you can with your application to show that your development will not flood. Some advice is given in this guidance (please view Guidance document on using SEPA Flood Maps for land use planning) on using the maps for planning. If it cannot be shown clearly that there would be no flooding, you may need to obtain a more detailed flood risk assessment for the site. 

The latest UK climate change projections predict Scotland will experience milder, wetter winters, warmer, drier summers, more heavy rainfall events and rising sea levels. This means that some areas are likely to flood more often in the future and that in some places flooding could become more severe. The amount of change that occurs will depend on how successful we are in reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally. Find out more on on Climate Change and Flood Risk. 

The flood maps are made from a combination of national and local scale models, and so the level of detail and accuracy varies.

More information on how the SEPA flood maps were developed can be found in this document.

You can also find lots of information on how we are continually working to develop and improve our knowledge of flooding in this section of our website.

The Flood Hazard maps were last updated in November 2023.

Flood mapping is a dynamic process and, as we develop and improve our data, methods and techniques, the maps will be reviewed and updated.

We will continue to work with responsible authorities and partner organisations to improve our knowledge, understanding and the representation of flooding across Scotland.

You can provide this information to us using our contact form. Only provide your contact details if you wish to be contacted by us.

SEPA’s flood maps that show the risk of flooding from river, the sea, and surface water are now available under Open Government Licence (OGL) and are available for anyone to use and download from our website.

• Data can be viewed online using the flood map viewer. 
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) datasets can be downloaded from SEPA’s Data Publication webpage.

The datasets are currently only available for download and can be used within standard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software packages. As we continue to develop our flooding products and services then we may be able to offer this functionality in the future.

License restrictions prevent the flood maps being copied and printed from the SEPA web site viewer, but they can be viewed to support commercial decisions.

SEPA’s flood maps that show the risk of flooding from river, the sea, and surface water are available under Open Government Licence. This means that information about the extent, depth and velocity of flooding that can be downloaded from the SEPA Data Publication Webpage can be used for commercial purposes.

SEPA has a statutory responsibility to produce flood maps to inform the people of Scotland about flood risk. As our flood maps are available under Open Government Licence, there are no restrictions on their commercial use and it is possible that insurance companies may use our flood maps to help determine insurance premiums, however they have not been explicitly designed for this purpose.

Insurance companies set their own rules for assessing flood risk and setting premiums. These range from indicators such as distance from a watercourse, history of previous flooding claims in an area, and some also have their own flood maps. They may well review their rules, which can affect insurance premiums year on year.

In general, it can be worth shopping around. Perhaps using an insurance comparison tool. Different insurance providers have different rules for determining what constitutes flood risk to a property. If you are unhappy with any part of the insurance process, you can raise it with the financial ombudsman service.

You can also refer to this leaflet.

We would recommend to people who have difficulty in obtaining insurance cover to directly contact insurance companies to discuss the issues with them and consider using an insurance broker. The British Insurance Brokers Association (www.biba.org.uk) can help identify a range of brokers who can quote for flood insurance, whether as a stand-alone policy or as part of a bundled, household policy.

You can call Floodline on 0345 988 1188 or use our contact form.

OGL stands for Open Government Licence. This means that the data can be re-used free of charge without permission from SEPA.

SEPA’s OGL datasets are available for anyone to use and download from our website.

Yes, details of permitted use are in the link provided Open Government Licence.

Flood maps

The flood maps provide national datasets to show those areas of Scotland at a risk of flooding from the sea, rivers, and surface water. Information is provided on the extent, depth, and velocity (where available) of flooding. Three different likelihoods of flooding are available for all flood sources, an additional likelihood is available for river and coastal flood maps to show the potential impacts of climate change.

Local Plan Districts (LPDs)

Geographical areas in Scotland that are designated for flood management under the Flood Risk Management Act (Scotland) 2009. There are 14 LPDs across the country which SEPA and partners use to co-ordinate flood risk management in Scotland including the development of National and Local Flood Risk Management Plans.

Potentially Vulnerable Areas (PVAs)

Geographical areas in Scotland designated for flood management under the Flood Risk Management Act (Scotland) 2009. They show the parts of catchments and coastal areas where SEPA has identified that a nationally significant flood risk currently exists now or is likely to occur in the future. PVAs are located within the broader Flood Risk Management Local Plan Districts (LPDs). PVAs help SEPA and responsible authorities in Scotland prioritise where work could provide the most benefit.

Target Areas (TAs)

Geographical areas that are used to identify locations to focus targeted flood risk management objectives and actions as identified in Scotland’s National Flood Risk Management Plans 2021. Target Areas are located within Potential Vulnerable Areas (PVAs) which are a broader unit of management, these locations are not however formally designated areas under the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act.

Our maps are developed using data supplied to SEPA by many providers. Some datasets are subject to restrictions because they include data from third parties that are only available under licence. Sharing and use of these datasets must comply with the licensors’ terms and conditions.

Yes - we are working with our data providers to enable us to make more of our datasets accessible to support efficient decisions by the public and our partner organisations.

Non-OGL SEPA flooding datasets are only available to third parties with statutory flood risk management or civil contingency responsibilities, due to our obligations to the licensors of the datasets underlying our data. This is principally public bodies, statutory undertakers or those working on their behalf.

If your organisation falls into this category, please use the Contact Form to discuss what licensing options may be available.

An Attribution Statement is a statement that gives credit to, or attributes, the creator of the work from whom you have borrowed. If you have altered the work in any way, indicate that in your attribution statement.

The SEPA OGL datasets are derived from several different datasets belonging to other parties. It is important that these other parties are given proper credit for the use of their data.

Where you do any of these things:

• copy, publish, distribute, or transmit the OGL datasets
• adapt the OGL datasets
• exploit the OGL datasets commercially or non-commercially. For example, by combining it with other data, or by including it in your own product or application

.…you must:

• acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to the attribution statement we provide, and
• where possible, you should also provide a link to the Open Government Licence.

You may include a URL or hyperlink to a resource that contains the required attribution statements: if you use a document generated by SEPA you should ensure you link to a copy that you host, as the SEPA website is subject to change.

These are important conditions of this licence and if you fail to comply with them the rights granted to you under this licence will end automatically.

An attribution statement should be clearly visible where data from SEPA has been included in your work/product. The correct attribution statement(s) are provided with the documentation accompanying the dataset you have included. Where the attribution statement has been provided in a separate document, these should be linked to as locally hosted copy as the SEPA website is subject to change.

The Scottish Flood Forecast is a new 3-day flood forecast which is produced by the Scottish Flood Forecasting Service (SFFS) daily. The SFFS is a partnership between SEPA and the Met Office.

The Scottish Flood Forecast is the public version of daily Flood Guidance Statement (FGS) we issue to Category 1 and 2 agencies.

It is available on SEPA’s website at www.sepa.org.uk/scottishfloodforecast.

The webpage shows a 3-day forecast at a national level, using maps and the colours yellow, amber, and red to show whether flooding is likely to happen over the next 3 days and describe what the impacts may be. It will also point you to information on what to do next.

The Scottish Flood Forecast has been created after research was undertaken with the public, community flood groups, emergency responders, our partners and employees.

The user research identified a need for the public to receive flood information earlier in a simple and clear way and have the ability to check if no significant flooding is expected

It can be used by anyone interested in finding out at a national level whether flooding is likely to happen across Scotland over the next 3 days and what to do next. The public can check it any time.

The Scottish Flood Forecast is based on the best available information, but there will still be a chance of minor and localised flooding when the maps have no areas coloured red, amber, and yellow.

The Scottish Flood Forecast is simple to use. It is a static webpage available on SEPA’s website that you can access any time. You can access it at www.sepa.org.uk/scottishfloodforecast

The service uses three simple maps and the colours yellow, amber, and red to indicate whether flooding is likely across Scotland over the next three days. It describes what might happen because of flooding and advice on what to do next.

You can access the webpage on SEPA’s website at www.sepa.org.uk/scottishfloodforecast. If you have any issues accessing the information on the webpage, please call Floodline on 0345 988 1188 and an advisor will be able to help.

The webpage has been designed and should work with screen readers to describe the statement for those with visual impairments.

The web service will be updated daily after 10:30am. If a situation is developing or escalating and the risk significantly changes, then an updated version of the Scottish Flood Forecast will be published in the afternoon after 3:30pm in alignment with the Flood Guidance Statement issued to responders. In exceptional circumstances (such as if the risk is elevated to amber or red), the Scottish Flood Forecast will be updated at other times.

The colours yellow, amber, and red depend on a combination of both the impact flooding may have and the likelihood of those impacts occurring.

• Yellow is associated with a low overall flood risk. The colour will be used when flooding is likely to cause some low-level impacts including some disruption to travel to some areas. However, it can also be used when flooding can bring more severe impacts to majority of people but the certainty of these impacts occurring is much lower.
• Amber is used to describe a medium overall flood risk. There is an increased likelihood of impacts from flooding, which could potentially disrupt your plans. This means there is the possibility of travel delays, road and rail closures, and the potential risk to life and property. You should think about changing your plans and taking action to protect yourself and your property.
• Red is used to describe a high overall flood risk. Dangerous flooding is expected, and you should take action now to keep yourself and others safe from the impacts of flooding. It is very likely that there will be a risk to life, with substantial disruption to travel, and possibly widespread damage to property and infrastructure. You should avoid travelling, where possible, and follow the advice of emergency services and local authorities.

Yes, the colour yellow can have two different meanings.

Yellow can be used for a range of flooding situations. The colour will be used when flooding is likely to cause some low-level impacts including some disruption to travel to some areas. However, it can also be used when flooding can bring more severe impacts to majority of people but the certainty of these impacts occurring is much lower.

It is important to read the content in the impact descriptions and the summary at the top of the Scottish Flood Forecast to understand what each colour means.

It means that no significant flooding is expected over the next 3 days. However very localised and minor flooding could still happen if it rains or because of wave overtopping along the coast. Some very localised and minor flooding is always possible if it rains, for example, because of local drainage blockages, or some fields may be flooded when a local burn is in spate.

Not always, sometimes there will be a very low risk of flooding which doesn’t fall under the colour categories. In this situation, the summary at the top of the Scottish Flood Forecast will provide more information.

This version is the high-level, national flood forecast. This is the first step in the journey to providing you with improved flood information. The next step will involve designing a more regional flood forecast which will provide you with more localised flood information. As part of the regional flood forecast, it is anticipated that you will be able to do a postcode search to find information relevant to your local area or the area you are interested in.

Not necessarily, the forecast for that day could change over the course of the three days, so it’s important that you continue to check the forecast on a regular basis.

The Scottish Flood Forecast complements the existing regional flood alerting and local flood warning services, it is the earliest information available to the public about where flooding is expected. It should indicate where regional flood alerts and/or local flood warnings will be out over the 3-day period.

The Scottish Flood Forecasting Service (SFFS) already produces a daily, national flood guidance statement issued to Category 1 and 2 agencies, such as emergency responders, local authorities other organisations with flooding management duties and recognised community responders (e.g., Scottish Flood Forum, Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) etc). Each daily statement gives an assessment of the risk of flooding for the next five days and provides organisations with valuable time to put preparations in place to reduce the impact of flooding.

The Scottish Flood Forecast uses the same information but presents it in a simpler way, covering three days rather than five. We also haven’t included the colour green to show very low flood risk because feedback told us that green generally means to most people that everything is ok and using this colour will cause confusion.

Yes. This version is the national flood forecast, the high-level version. This is the first step in the journey to providing our customers with improved flood information. The next step will involve designing a more regional flood forecast which will provide the public with more localised flood information.

Your feedback is very important to helping us improve the Scottish Flood Forecast. You can do this by clicking on the ‘feedback’ link at the top of the Scottish Flood Forecast webpage.

Yes, during the public beta release we asked the public for feedback on the test version of the Scottish Flood Forecast. As a result of this feedback, we have made improvements to the way we describe flood impacts so that this information is much clearer.

SEPA has a statutory responsibility to produce flood maps to inform the people of Scotland about flood risk. As our flood maps are available under Open Government Licence, there are no restrictions on their commercial use and it is possible that insurance companies may use our flood maps to help determine insurance premiums, however they have not been explicitly designed for this purpose.

Insurance companies set their own rules for assessing flood risk and setting premiums. These range from indicators such as distance from a watercourse, history of previous flooding claims in an area, and some also have their own flood maps. They may well review their rules, which can affect insurance premiums year on year.

In general, it can be worth shopping around. Perhaps using an insurance comparison tool. Different insurance providers have different rules for determining what constitutes flood risk to a property. If you are unhappy with any part of the insurance process, you can raise it with the financial ombudsman service.

We would recommend to people who have difficulty in obtaining insurance cover to directly contact insurance companies to discuss the issues with them and consider using an insurance broker. The British Insurance Brokers Association (www.biba.org.uk) can help identify a range of brokers who can quote for flood insurance, whether as a stand-alone policy or as part of a bundled, household policy.

It is worth shopping around for quotes. If you can demonstrate that you have taken steps to minimise potential flood damage (for example, by installing flood protection products), then insurers may take this into consideration when calculating risk.

Flood Re is a joint government and insurance industry initiative created to help provide affordable insurance to those households at highest risk of flooding. You can find out more on the Flood Re website.

The Scottish Flood Forum can also provide advice on finding insurance.

We do not issue flood risk reports for properties.

If you wish to develop an area of land, you may have to submit a flood risk assessment – the planning section of our website provides more information on the planning process and flooding.

Affordable home insurance for eligible properties which are at risk of flooding is now available through Flood Re. Flood Re is a joint government and insurance industry initiative which was launch in April 2016. You can find ourt more on the Flood Re website.

Across the strategies there are 42 prioritised flood protection schemes or engineering works. The schemes will contribute to reducing flood risk within a number of communities. The development and delivery of the proposed flood protection schemes are however dependent on receipt of funding and resources available. We have collated the list of prioritised flood protection schemes into one document for ease of viewing.