dataset · United Kingdom
OS Open Rivers
OS Open Rivers GIS data contains over 144,000 km of water bodies and watercourses map data. These include freshwater rivers, tidal estuaries and canals. Understand how water bodies and watercourses in Great Britain join up. OS Open Rivers provides a comprehensive datset of Great Britain's River Network, which approximately indicates the central alignment of the watercourse. Inland and tidal rivers are represented by a series of connected link and node features which are assigned with river name
Visit source ↗Source details
Licence: ["Please acknowledge the copyright and the source of the data by including the following attribution statement:\nContains OS data \u00a9 Crown copyright and database right 2021"]
Evidence quality: 50.4
Listed in data.gov.uk public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).
Metadata checked: 2026-10-14T13:20:00.000Z
What's in it
- Data offered docs-verified
- river network centreline · freshwater rivers · tidal estuaries · canals · river name · flow direction
- Coverage docs-verified
- Great Britain
- Update frequency docs-verified
- biannually
- Formats docs-verified
- GeoPackage · GML · Shapefile
- Access llm-inferred
- Free open data via OS OpenData downloads and OS DataHub; licence: attribution required ('Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2021')
Useful for
- Use cases llm-inferred
- Watercourse network and nearest-river identification for flood risk screening and FRA context · Flow direction and river-name lookup for outfall and culvert siting in drainage strategies · Connectivity checks of water bodies for catchment and ecology baseline mapping
- Audience llm-inferred
- flood consultants · hydrologists · drainage engineers · GIS analysts · ecologists
Limitations
- Constraints llm-inferred
- Centreline is an approximate alignment of the watercourse, not a surveyed channel geometry · Updated biannually, so recent network changes may be missing · Requires acknowledging OS copyright and source in outputs · Great Britain only; Northern Ireland not stated in coverage · No spatial resolution stated in the docs
Evidence
- https://osdatahub.os.uk/data/downloads/open
- https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/dc29160b-b163-4c6e-8817-f313229bcc23/os-open-rivers1
Check upstream coverage, uncertainty and licence before use. Station observations are not forecasts or design levels.