National near real-time storm discharge data goes live

England’s water industry, via trade body Water UK and the industry’s open data collaboration, Stream, has launched the ‘National Storm Overflows Hub’ –  a world first resource providing near real-time data on all of England’s 14,000 storm overflows.

The hub builds on and draws together individual water company maps, which have been coming online over the past year or so following Thames Water’s lead. It shows when, where and for how long a storm overflow has been active, as well as providing contextual Q&A information, and information on investment upgrades coming down the line under the National Storm Overflows Plan for England.

The Hub was developed in line with expert advice from an independent steering group which included The Rivers Trust, Surfers Against Sewage, CCW, the Environment Agency, Ofwat and Defra. It is open source, with an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow third parties to use the data on their own sites. The Rivers Trust has already updated its sewage map with the Hub data: https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map. 

The move has been universally welcomed, including by recreational water users, environmentalists and customers.

CCW chair Rob Wilson said: “It has been great to witness water companies, environmental groups, campaigners and others working collaboratively to bring this project to life and it shows what can be achieved when the sector unites behind a common goal that will benefit people and the environment.”

The Rivers Trust heralded the greater transparency and ease of access to data, and called for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland to follow suit. But it also argued there is more to do. Technical director Michelle Walker said: “We need water companies to start monitoring and sharing information about the volume and quality of untreated sewage being discharged to understand the impacts on river ecosystems and the risks to human health.”

More widely, she said: “We urgently need a smart monitoring system for our river catchments, which combines data from the best available technology (like real time water quality sensors, satellite remote sensing, AI and machine learning models), with community citizen science data, to better understand the impacts of the many other sources of pollution including treated sewage, agricultural pollution, urban and road runoff.”