Halcrow helped develop the Met Office and Environment Agency Extreme Rainfall Alert (ERA) Service, now delivered by the Flood Forecasting Centre.
The service has been developed to forecast and warn for surface water flood risk, using state of the art meteorological modelling. Our staff helped develop the concept of the ERA service and the development of suitable rainfall thresholds for operational use.
After its trial in 2008, Halcrow made a post-event evaluation of the ERA service assessing how well individual events were forecast and making recommendations for service improvement. The post-event evaluation study examined both the accuracy of the forecasts, the process of issuing the ERAs and carried out consultation with over 10 different Category 1 and 2 organisations receiving the Trial Service, including 191 responses from Environment Agency staff.