UK: Environment Agency poised to open flood data to public

After talks with the UK cabinet office, real-time river levels, flood maps and more could all become available as free and commercially reusable data, reports the Guardian.

“Perhaps the most important thing about open (flood) data is the serendipitous reuse that it enables in the long term, the unpredictable innovation that can build new ecosystems of tools and analysis based on this data that can build the resilience we need in a more unpredictable climate. For something like flood data, openness should be a no brainer”, Jack Townsend of the web science centre at the University of Southampton told the Guardian.