LIFE HACK: Keep ahead of floods with GaugeMap

Posted By: Kate RussellPosted date: October 23, 2014

By 2050, researchers expect flooding costs in Europe to reach nearly $30 billion annually, and we can certainly expect it to continue to be a problem for much of the U.K. GaugeMap shows live data from over 2400 river level gauges across England and Wales. The data displayed on each of the river level gauges is recorded at 15 minute intervals by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales. As well as the map they’ve given each of the Environment Agency’s river level gauges its own twitter account, like this one at Welsh Bridge, so to see the latest status of a stretch of river all you need to do is follow it on twitter. If you live close to a river that is prone to flooding you can follow the Twitter List for that river, receiving tweets from all the gauges for the best chance of being prepared should water levels rise suddenly.

Kate Russell

Kate Russell is a technology reporter, speaker and author. She appears weekly on the Webscape segment of the BBC technology show Click, and is a regular expert at various other TV and radio stations. Kate's first book, ‘Working the Cloud’, is the ultimate collection of online tips, tricks and resources for small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Her first novel, ‘Elite: Mostly Harmless’, is a sci-fi story based on a remake of the computer game Elite Dangerous.