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The City of Southampton is situated on the south coast of England. The Port of Southampton sits at the head of Southampton Water, a 25 km long tidal estuary leading from the city to the English Channel. Parts of the city are very low lying and vulnerable to flooding, particularly during periods of extreme high tides, and this is expected to worsen in the future with rising sea levels.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impacts of extreme tides on flooding in the vicinity of one low lying area, Eling, which lies close to the head of Southampton Water. The work involved using a frequency analysis of existing extreme tides at the open sea boundary to derive tidal inputs to be used in a 2-D hydrodynamic model of the estuary. An understanding of the magnitude of sea level rise and of extreme tides enabled a simulation of the tidal response to be used as input for a linked study of flooding. The use of numerical simulations to derive key tidal data for areas where such data is lacking could have wide application.