ICIMOD Regional Database System (RDS)
ICIMOD's regional geospatial database for the Hindu Kush Himalaya including upper Mekong/Salween/Yangtze headwaters (China), with hydrology, glacier, snow and river-basin datasets downloadable in GIS formats.
rds.icimod.org
At a glance
- Region
- China / HKH region (Asia)
- Coverage
- Hindu Kush Himalaya incl. China
- Access
- Free
- Category
- Research Institute
- Last updated
- 2025
What's inside
- river basins
- glaciers
- snow
- hydrology
Terms explained
What you can do with it
Typical work that data of this type supports.
- 01
Melt runoff
Forecast snowmelt contributions to rivers.
Because it has: glaciers
- 02
Glacier change
Track glacier retreat over decades.
- 03
Design flows
Estimate 1-in-50 and 1-in-100 year floods for bridges, culverts and spillways.
Because it has: hydrology
Where AI adds value
Ideas for machine learning and AI agents built on this kind of data.
- 01
Cloud-free snow maps
Fill snow cover hidden by cloud with ML.
- 02
Melt-season flows
Predict melt-season river flow from snow and weather.
- 03
Flow forecasting
Train LSTM-style models on past records to forecast river levels and flow days ahead.
Machine access and documentation
Open API
GeoNetwork/GeoServer OGC services on rds.icimod.org
Licence: Open data
Listed in our registry of open water APIs, which WaterDataGPT can query live.
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