DRIP Surface water flood forecasting pilot scheme - Devon Resilience Innovation Project

Early Autumn 2025 update

We shouldn’t be ungrateful, but for most of the year it has largely been a very quiet weather period for launching a flood forecasting system! Since the launch in January, the Met Office data shows that it was a drier than average winter season in Devon, provisionally the second driest spring on record for England and many parts of Devon have had a drier than average June, July and August. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that since the launch of the pilot WhatsApp system there has only been one forecast of a rainfall event that has triggered the notification system in one of our pilot communities. This was a three-day flood notification but the risk of flooding subsided before the 12-hour notification was issued. Thankfully this did not result in sufficient rainfall for flooding to be reported, however our monitoring did show that some isolated heavy rainfall was recorded in the vicinity. Recently (at the end of August), some Devon communities experienced heavy rain and flooding including Kingsbridge and Churchstow. We are currently investigating the system responses for these communities. However, our initial understanding is that this rainfall was forecast by the system, but the probability of flooding was below the threshold needed to trigger a notification.

Ongoing work on the flood forecasting system

Behind the scenes, there has also been ongoing work on the system:

We have been conducting ongoing monitoring and updating of the rainfall thresholds used to generate the notifications . We have also investigated the three-day flood forecast that was issued and we are currently investigating the event at the end of August.
We are aware that there have been some notifications sent out by the system in error. These were for a “Low” risk of flooding; this level of risk should not have triggered the notification system. Measures were taken quickly to inform recipients that there were no active notifications for flooding and then to inform users once the system was working correctly. The source of the problem has been identified and fixed.
The suggested actions to take on receipt of a surface water flood notification are now linked from the WhatsApp notification and provided on the DRIP website for ease of access Surface water flood forecasting pilot project – Devon Resilience Innovation Project
The project is currently starting to investigate the viability of using other data sources to supplement the current data to improve local forecasting. This includes data from smart gullies and soil moisture sensors.

The trial continues until March 2027

The pilot study has been promoted at various different events, but if you know of anyone else from one of the ten communities who would be interested in signing up – please share the WhatsApp channel page with them.

As we move into a more unsettled autumn, please continue to monitor the Surface Water Flood Forecast Pilot WhatsApp channel and please remember to report any flooding events in your community via the link that will be included within a follow up message on WhatsApp.

If you did not complete the baseline questionnaire about perceptions of flood risk and preparedness after the launch event in January, we would still value you completing it. Please find the link here: DRIP Surface Water Flood Forecasting – initial questionnaire

Contact information

If you have any questions about the trial or would like further information, please contact Annabel.beasley@devon.gov.uk