The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has launched a new state-of-the-art service which will provide the earliest possible warning for Scots living in communities threatened by river or coastal flooding.

The new Floodline direct warning service aims to give those at risk valuable time to take action and get the benefit of SEPA's extensive flood forecasting expertise and monitoring networks.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Roseanna Cunningham MSP described it as an "essential tool" and urged people to sign up for the free warnings, which will be sent to registered mobile phones and landlines.

Funding from the Scottish Government has enabled SEPA to develop and run the new direct warning service, which is seen a significant improvement to the existing Floodline recorded telephone and website facility.

Previously the Scottish public relied on hearing about flooding through the media, by word of mouth, through local services or by contacting SEPA's 24-hour recorded telephone service. Now anyone – including those who live in, work or travel through areas at risk of flooding – can sign up to the new service and receive details on the likelihood and timing of any potential flooding threat.

Service improvements include:

• New easy-to-understand flood warning symbols which make it clear what action people should take, and when.
• The creation of more than 200 smaller, local flood warning areas to provide more meaningful and targeted information.
• New Floodline quick dial codes allow users to quickly access the information relevant to them.

Roseanna Cunningham MSP said:

"The Floodline direct warning service is a quick and up to date way of making sure that communities know about the risk of flooding in their area as soon as possible, giving them more time to prepare and protect themselves.

"I want as many people as possible to sign up to this free service and improve their resilience to flooding. This is not just about homes as the benefits apply equally to businesses and we have recently seen that they can be disrupted by flooding too.

"Coupled with the new Scottish Flood Forecasting Service, which gives emergency responders better and earlier information, Floodline means that the people of Scotland will benefit directly from the £9 million we've invested in these innovative approaches."

The five-year, multi-million pound contract for Floodline Warnings Direct was delivered by BT Business and software company HTK. The BT/ HTK system will involved the creation of a fully-managed, hosted multi-media platform for recording and automatically disseminating flood warnings throughout Scotland to partner organisations like the police, fire and rescue, local authorities and the public.

BT Business is providing the helpdesk and contractual framework for the solution, while HTK provided the technology platform, called HTK Horizon. Running Horizon through a standard web browser, SEPA will be able to manage flood warnings and tailor their response to the level of threat and the specific target area.

Professor James Curran, SEPA’S director of science and strategy, said the project was a significant investment in communications technology.He described the improvements made to Floodline as a huge step forward in terms of flood warning for Scotland.