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  4. Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea (RoFRS) and Risk of Flooding from Surface Water (RoFSW)

How do I download Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea (RoFRS) and Risk of Flooding from Surface Water (RoFSW) Data?

Created: 28 January 2025 Updated: 23 July 2025

Users can download data from the ‘Data services and download by area of interest’ section of the dataset page.  Users can define their own area of interest using the ‘Draw polygon’ tools within the user interface.

Note that data will only be available for preview if you zoom to 500m (1:50 000) on the preview map.

Due to the size and complexity of a national 2m grid square data product, you will need to ‘Request a Large Dataset’ if the area you define exceeds the limits of the automated download.  The threshold is based on the density of features requested, as opposed to total area - large area downloads for these datasets are not currently possible through the download app.

‘Large Data Requests’ will be made available via a pre-prepared SFTP site: dspsftplive.blob.core.windows.net

Users who have raised a ticket will receive the username and password to access the data.  If you have any problems accessing the SFTP, please try the following troubleshooting tips:

  • check that the SFTP client you are using is up to date - recommended clients are FileZilla and WinSCP

  • check that you have input the correct credentials

  • check you have input the correct port number - some clients e.g. FileZilla, will automatically use port 21 (FTP) for connections, so you will need to explicitly set the port to 22 (SFTP)

  • check if the SFTP connection could be blocked by your corporate / restrictive firewall.

You may need to work with your IT department if you encounter any issues.

Once you have access to the SFTP site, you will find a folder for each product and sub-directories for each Ordnance Survey National Grid square.  Within each of these you will find the data clipped to 50km tiles. Tiles names are based on the Ordnance Survey National Grid. See an index of tile names.

It is strongly recommended that you only download the tiles for your Area of Interest, due to the size of the data.

Currently, only File Geodatabase format is supported - provided in compressed .zip files.  For each 50km tile, separate File Geodatabases are available for the present day and climate change scenario.

Each File Geodatabase contains a series of feature classes associated with the scenario. For example, ‘RoFRS_<TileRef>_<VersionNo>.gdb’ contains:

  • RoFRS_4band

  • RoFRS_4band_0_2m_depth

  • RoFRS_4band_0_3m_depth

  • RoFRS_4band_0_6m_depth

  • RoFRS_4band_0_9m_depth

  • RoFRS_4band_1_2m_depth