EA Flood Monitoring MCP Server

EA Flood Monitoring

The Environment Agency Flood Monitoring API provides real-time flood data for England including warnings, water levels, flows, and monitoring station metadata.

Data Model

• Floods — Active flood warnings/alerts with severity levels (1=Severe, 2=Warning, 3=Alert, 4=No longer in force).
• Stations — ~4000 monitoring stations measuring water level, flow, rainfall, wind, temperature.
• Measures — Individual measurement series from a station (e.g. upstream level, downstream level).
• Readings — Time-series values from measures, typically every 15 minutes.
• Flood Areas — Geographic regions to which warnings/alerts apply (Alert Areas and Warning Areas).

Key Patterns

• Use _limit and _offset when paging through large collections.
• Station IDs look like 1029TH, 1491TH — use notation or stationReference fields.
• Severity levels: 1 (Severe Flood Warning), 2 (Flood Warning), 3 (Flood Alert), 4 (Warning no longer in force).
• Filter stations by parameter (level, flow, rainfall), qualifier (Stage, Downstream Stage, Tidal Level, Groundwater).
• Geo-filter with lat, long, dist (km radius) on station and warning listings that support it.

Gotchas

• No auth: Completely open API. Be respectful of rate limits.
• Readings transfer delay: Data is measured every 15 min but transferred at varying frequencies.
• Transient warnings: Flood warning records are temporary—they drop out once the event clears.
• Station items format: Single station detail returns items as an object, not an array.