Global Flood Map
The first global flood map to provide risk professionals with all perils and climate options
Introduction Fathom-Global 3.0 is the most robust and comprehensive global flood map in the world. It revolutionises how insurers, financial institutions, engineers, corporates and governments can understand and integrate flood hazard and climate change data into their risk operations
Product key features
~30-meter resolution globally
1 arcsecond data, based on FABDEM, our latest complete map of the Earth’s terrain
Climate Dynamics
Users can access climate conditioned flood hazard data for any projected combination of future year and climate scenario up to 2100
Inland & coastal
Fluvial, pluvial and coastal flooding – Assess the risk from different types of flood including defended and undefended views
Terrain data
Underpinned by an unparalleled Digital Elevation Model (DEM) combining FABDEM with the best available local data
Access
Fathom’s API allows instant on-demand access to all of Fathom’s spatial data
Flood layers
Depths for return periods between 5 and 1000 years
Risk Scores (Relative Risk and Risk Category) for each type of flooding
About the model Fathom’s global flood map is unique in harnessing world-leading modelling techniques and combining these with the very latest developments in hydrology, geospatial data and climate science. This has, for the first time, produced complete coverage of inland and coastal perils for the whole world, under multiple climate scenarios
Terrain data
Fathom’s new global flood map combines FABDEM, LiDAR and MERIT-Hydro, the best terrain and hydrography data currently available. These data provide the most accurate view of the ground surface elevation and the location of all rivers.
By coupling the latest topography and hydrography datasets with cutting-edge hydraulic modelling techniques, Fathom has produced truly world-leading flood data for the whole planet. All methods have been peer-reviewed and published in the most respected scientific journals, representing a major advance in our ability to understand flooding at the global scale.
The most important component of any global flood map is the terrain data. The global flood map is underpinned by FABDEM, and enriched with LiDAR data where it is available. Learn more about FABDEM here.
Hydraulic modelling
Flood models require complex hydrodynamic solutions to be solved at high resolutions. At large scales, this presents a computational obstacle.
To overcome this we have pioneered the computational representation of floodplain dynamics. This includes the development of several state-of-the art model components, made possible through collaborative academic research.
These include features that enable us to not only represent every river channel in the world, but also determine its width, depth and flow velocity. More accurate representation of river channels enables us to produce better flood maps.
Climate Dynamics
Fathom-Global 3.0 enables users to quantify and mitigate flood hazards, and understand changes in risk under future climate scenarios.
Made possible through Fathom’s Climate Dynamics framework that allows users to examine any inland or coastal flood peril for a wide range of climate options.
This is the only technology on the market to date that not only utilises the latest in climate science, but also provides users with the flexibility to meet varying regulatory and reporting requirements and to understand the impact of changing flood risk over time.
Crucially, Climate Dynamics also allows users to understand the uncertainty present in future climate projections.
This will prove vital to financial institutions, insurers, engineers and large corporations who are compelled by regulation and legislation to provide increasingly more detailed and precise reporting.
What is Fathom’s Climate Dynamics?
Learn all about how Fathom developed Climate Dynamics and what makes it unique in our upcoming webinar.
The evolution of Fathom’s Global Flood Map
Fathom-Global 1.0
2015
The most comprehensive global view of flood available at the time, Fathom launched its first flood hazard dataset in 2015.
Built on 30 years of published scientific research, it used an early iteration of our global terrain data. We knew that floodplain topography and small flow pathways were poorly defined in some areas and that we could significantly improve on this in future releases.
Groundbreaking flood hazard data:
- Terrain data: custom-processed SRTM
- Discharge estimation: Global RFFA
- River channels: HydroSHEDS+
- Efficient Fathom hydraulics models
- Fathom model automation framework.
Fathom-Global 2.0
2019
The second iteration of Fathom-Global featured major enhancements. Better representation of river Channels and the ability to produce plausible event footprints were groundbreaking advances.
Our research programme was already pointing the way to even more significant developments to come, especially in our understanding of terrain and river channels.
Major leap in our understanding flood:
- MERIT-DEM terrain dataset
- River channels: MERIT-Hydro
- Plausible event footprints.
Fathom-Global 3.0
2022
A step change in risk professionals’ ability to understand flooding at the global scale.
Coupling the latest topography and hydrography datasets with cutting-edge hydraulic modelling. Our latest terrain data, the first global digital elevation model with forest and buildings removed at a ~30-meter resolution and employing the most advanced representation of river channels available, including estimations of location, size and depth.
State of the art in flood data science:
- Fluvial, pluvial and coastal. The first complete global view of flood hazard
- Climate dynamics. Maps across time periods, warming levels and emissions scenarios
- API. On demand access to all of our spatial data
- 100% of river channels modelled.
